Google names some of Google Play‘s best apps, books, and games every year, and it’s not looking to break that tradition in 2025. The tech giant has just released a comprehensive list of Google Play’s best of 2025, celebrating not just brilliance, ingenuity, and quality, but also the developers behind some of the best apps on the platform.
“Play is only successful when our developers are successful — their innovation is what fuels the platform and provides the content these awards are designed to honor.”
Google added that it’s trying to evolve the Google Play Store into an experience “built entirely around you,” and it’s doing so by boosting rewards, unifying the gaming experience, and by making content easier to fund. All of that, too, plays a major role in supporting the developers who make Google Play a beloved destination for users around the world.
It’s essentially a feedback loop, one that sets the stage for apps to dominate — app’s like these, to be specific:
Best overall app and game
Best app
Honey B Games’ Focus Friend by Hank Green won 2025’s best app award. As its name suggests, the app is designed to help users focus on the task at hand and minimize distractions.
Essentially a focus timer, the app encourages you to keep your phone away to focus on important tasks. “When you Focus, your Bean Friend will Focus. If you interrupt your Bean by turning off the timer, they’ll be really really sad,” reads the app’s Play Store description. “Complete your focus session, and this cute Bean will give you prizes to buy decorations to help furnish their room.”
Best game
The Pokémon Company’s Pokémon TCG Pocket won the coveted award of Best Game of 2025. Essentially a digitially-reimagined version of the iconic card game, it was all-but-certain that the game would take home the award.
Best apps of 2025 (other categories)
Best games of 2025 (other categories)
Google’s 2025 book picks
Fiction
- Favorite fantasy: “The Raven Scholar” by Antonia Hodgson
- Favorite thriller: “Famous Last Words” by Gillian McAllister
- Favorite romance: “Promise Me Sunshine” by Cara Bastone
- Favorite contemporary fiction: “The Emperor of Gladness” by Ocean Vuong
- Favorite horror: “Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zheng” by Kylie Lee Baker
- Favorite historical fiction: “Herod the Great” by Zora Neal Hurson
- Favorite science fiction: “Remember You Will Die” by Eden Robins
- Favorite graphic novel:“Buddha Jumps over the Wall, and Other Curiously Named Classic Chinese Dishes” by Ying Chang Compestine
- Favorite manga: “The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy at All Vol 1” by Sumiko Arai
- Favorite light novel: “Witch and Mercenary volume 1” by Chohokiteki Kaeru
Nonfiction
- Favorite memoir: “This American Woman” by Zarna Garg
- Favorite business book: “The Ambition Trap: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living” by Amina AlTai
- Favorite self help: “Validation: How the Skill Set That Revolutionized Psychology Will Transform Your Relationships, Increase Your Influence, and Change Your Life” by Caroline Fleck
- Favorite nonfiction: “Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America” by Bridget Read
Kids and teens
- Favorite picture book: “Wind Watchers” by Micha Archer
- Favorite middle grade book: “Very Bad at Math” by Hope Larson
- Favorite young adult fiction: “Sisters in the Wind” by Angeline Boulley
