The 100 Best iPhone Apps of 2018

Whether you received a new iPhone for the holidays or you just want to breathe new life into an older one, these are the apps you need.

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So, you've got that shiny new iPhone X, but what good is it without awesome iOS apps? Not much good at all. Even if you don't have the latest handset from Cupertino, one of the top reasons for owning an Apple iPhone is because of the ever-increasing wealth of apps available for the platform. But which ones to install? We've got you covered. The experts here at PCMag have tested a vast number of apps, sorting the good from the bad, to come up with this all-encompassing list of the 100 best iPhone apps.

If 100 apps are too many for your attention span, check out our much shorter and sweeter 12 must-have iPhone apps. There you'll find essential and well-known apps, some of which you may be surprised not to see here—since we needed to make room to fit as many deserving apps as possible in the top 100. Frugal smartphone owners will also want to check out our 50 best free iPhone apps roundup.

The apps included here will run just fine on the past few generations of iPhones, large or small. However, if you have an iPhone 8 or iPhone X, some apps let you do new, different things. Both new models include better cameras, and the iPhone X's Face ID makes a difference for some apps. Inside the new phones' guts, the new A11 processor makes some things possible that weren't before, as well, and many activities feel much zippier.

If you have an iPhone 6s or later, you can interact with apps in new ways using 3D Touch on their pressure-sensitive screens. For example, you can press firmly on the Facebook app icon to bring up a menu and immediately start updating your status. Users of the iPhone 7 Plus get that benefit, too, along with more powerful graphics processing and dual cameras that some apps can use to advantage.

Our favorite apps cover a wide range of activities, including photo editing, social networking, messaging, getting organized, and staying healthy. There's even one that helps you fill your gas tank cheaply. We've broken this list into the relevant categories, so you can browse just the app types that most interest you. When there's a full PCMag review available, it's linked to from the app's name.

In the past, this list also featured some of the coolest video games the App Store had to offer. But the App Store gaming scene has become so robust that we felt it really deserved its own separate, expanded list. If iPhone gaming is your passion, check out our feature covering the 30 best iPhone games.

Be sure to revisit this page in the future, too. Cool new apps arrive on the App Store all the time, so we periodically update this list with the most promising discoveries. Have you become enthralled with an app we failed to mention? We'd love to hear about it. Leave a comment and we might add your suggestion during our next update.