Apple has announced the winners of its annual App Store Awards. This is an editorial campaign that honors the best iPhone apps and best iPad apps of the year. This year's winners include Cultural Impact, which embodies the ability of apps to impact lives beyond the device.

For example, Cultural Impact winner Locket Widget connects users with their favorite people with a home screen widget that displays personal photos uploaded by friends and family. Another Cultural Impact winner, Waterllama, gamifies hydration through an aesthetically creative hydration tracking app for iPhone and Apple Watch.

Of course, there are many award-winning apps that simply excel in performance and popularity. It is perhaps not surprising that BeReal, a viral social networking platform that fosters spontaneity and authenticity, was named the best iPhone app of the year. Meanwhile, GoodNotes 5, as the best iPad app of the year, has seen remarkable growth among digital note-takers.

Several games were also recognized at this year's awards, particularly for their promotion of Apple Arcade and Apple TV games. 2022's winners total 16. Below is an overview of all categories and details of the winners we had the opportunity to talk to as part of the awards reveal.

Locket Widget began as a way for Matt Moss and his girlfriend to stay close when they embarked on a long-distance relationship. The app was designed so that when they each uploaded a photo, it would appear on the other's iPhone home screen via the Locket Widget. However, once the TikTok video of Moss demonstrating the Locket Widget went viral, the app became a platform for everyone to connect with their most important "5 or 10 people." [Social networking sites are designed to reach thousands of people, but Locket is for the few people who matter most to you," Moss says.

Approximately 2 billion photos have been sent through the Locket Widget to date from 30 million registered users. Recently, the option to include captions with photo uploads was added.

While there are many water tracking apps in the App Store, none make hydration as fun as Waterllama. Recognizing the benefits of drinking enough water, founder Vitalii Mogylevets wanted a way to track water intake that was both familiar and rewarding.

Mogylevets stated that she wanted to promote the habit in a way that would "make it more interesting to do every day."

If you take on and complete the challenge at Waterrama, you earn a character (with impeccable fashion sense, we might add). Some challenges encourage people to cut back on their caffeine and lactose intake, while others simply keep them hydrated. The best part? The more water you log in the app, the less notifications you'll get thanks to the smart reminder feature. Plus, multiple widget settings make it easy to check your daily status and log your drinks right from your home screen.

While there are many excellent note-taking apps for the iPad today, the story of Stephen Chang, founder of GoodNotes 5, began before the Apple Pencil was introduced. As a student, Chan saw a way for the original iPad to replace notes, but found it difficult to make legible handwriting with a third-party stylus.

"The turning point was when the Apple Pencil was introduced in 2015," Chang says. 'Right after the Apple Pencil was released, I started hiring.'

GoodNotes 5 experienced massive growth during the pandemic, with 1.6 billion notebooks created by 2022, he says. Standout features include tools to customize notebook parameters, annotate uploaded documents, collaborate with other users, and handwriting-to-text recognition. Soon, users will also be able to turn their notebooks into study cards and synchronize their notebooks with recorded audio.