Apple’s Vision Pro is here: These are some of the most exciting indie apps and games

With thousands of preorders for the Vision Pro rolling in, many consumers are curious about Apple’s AR/VR headset and the apps that will arrive alongside the new device. While some are from companies you recognize — Disney+, Max, TikTok, Zoom, Reddit and others — there are plenty of independent developers launching visionOS-optimized apps on Friday. So far, more than 600 apps and games have been designed for the Apple Vision Pro, Apple said earlier this week.

From spatial puzzle games to an app where you can view interior design projects in 3D, here are some of the visionOS apps from smaller developers that users can try out when their headset arrives. We’ll keep adding more to this list as they roll out.

Games

Soul Spire

Image Credits: Soul Assembly

Soul Spire is a spatial puzzle game exclusively developed for the Vision Pro. Players must free the friendly little ghosts trapped within color-shifting cubes.

Blackbox

Image Credits: Ryan McLeod

Blackbox is a unique spatial puzzle game where, instead of tapping or swiping, players must interact with puzzles — which appear as floating bubbles in the physical world — in other creative ways like singing and rotating, among other methods that don’t involve using their hands.

Ploppy Pairs

Image Credits: Tempuno/Michael Temper

Ploppy Pairs is a card-matching game that can be played with friends and family via SharePlay during FaceTime calls. You can also move, scale and rotate the cards so they appear on the coffee table in front of you or make them as big as your floor. Additionally, Michael Temper — the developer behind Ploppy — is launching a hidden-object game called “Where is Ploppy?”.

Doodle Draw

Image Credits: Sindre Sorhus

Doodle Draw is a simple digital drawing pad where you can brainstorm ideas and use your creativity to sketch doodles with various brushes, pens, markers and colors.

Music

NowPlaying

Image Credits: ModumHQ

NowPlaying is for all your music knowledge and discovery needs. Search your favorite song to learn detailed information about the artists, see recommendations, experience 3D models of Grammys and other music awards, and even earn trophies that can be displayed on a virtual shelf. Thanks to its ShazamKit integration, it also can identify which song is playing in your environment, whether it’s from a vinyl record or a TV show playing in the background.

Djay

Image Credits: Algoriddim

DJ app and AI mixer Djay is aimed at recreating the live DJ experience, featuring an interactive, hyperrealistic 3D turntable with controllable knobs and buttons, different futuristic-looking environments/backgrounds and a built-in music library.

Spool

Music video editor Spool allows you to create music videos and add visual effects as you perform by tapping visual pads.

AmazeVR Concerts

Image Credits: AmazeVR

AmazeVR Concerts lets you watch live-action 3D footage of your favorite artist in rendered virtual environments. Also available on Meta Quest, AmazeVR has previously hosted VR concerts with T-Pain, Megan Thee Stallion, Zara Larsson and UPSAHL.

Spatial Symphony

Spatial Symphony is a synthesizer controlled by hand gestures, acting as an instrument when you move your hands in the air. There are controls for waveform, reverb, distortion, chorus, scale snapping and more. In addition, Spatial Symphony includes a three-dimensional waveform visualization, making it so the sound waves move toward you in 3D.

Productivity

MindNode

Image Credits: MindNode

MindNode is a visual brainstorming app that helps you outline and organize notes in the form of thought bubbles that float around your virtual space.

Numerics

Image Credits: Cynapse

Numerics is a dashboard app that lets you bring your KPIs from over 90 tools like HubSpot and Google Sheets to view all your tasks in one place.

OmniPlan

Image Credits: The Omni Group

Project management tool OmniPlan is introducing a dedicated app for the Vision Pro that allows you to visualize Gantt charts in a large window the size of your room. The Omni Group is also bringing its other apps to the headset, including OmniFocus, OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner.

JigSpace

Image Credits: JigSpace

JigSpace wants to enable anyone to show their ideas with the use of 3D content, audio, video and text in spatial presentations. The company uses its collaboration with the Alfa Romeo F1 Team as an example (image shown above), bringing its life-size C43 car built to scale.

Focus

Focus is a task management app that applies the Pomodoro method. You can start and stop timers and track your progress on different tasks. You can also put a small focus timer window on the side while you browse other apps. The app is free for the first year on Vision Pro. After that, users can pay an annual fee of $39.99 to use it across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac.

Image Credits: Meaningful things

Focused Work

If you don’t want any of the task management stuff, but just want to create timers, Focused Work is the app for you.

Image Credits: Focused Work

Utilities

Tizipizi

Image Credits: Axel Le Pennec

Tizipizi is a time zone converter and world clock, letting you convert time to schedule a team meeting with staff worldwide. The app also allows you to compare availability with colleagues and personalize clocks by assigning it to a certain event or renaming it after someone who lives in that time zone.

Navi

Image Credits: Good Snooze/Jordi Bruin

Navi translates conversations in real time, allowing you to see live captions during FaceTime calls.

World Clock Widgets

Well, the name says it all. It’s world clock widgets for the Vision Pro device.

Image Credits: World Clock Widgets (opens in a new window)

Education

Study Snacks

Study Snacks splits the words you are learning across the space and then you have to put them together to guess the right word.

Subjects

The Subjects app, which helps students with tracking classes, homework and grades, is launching its version for Vision Pro.

Image Credits: Subjects

Other Fun Apps

Sky Guide

Image Credits: Fifth Star Labs

Sky Guide reimagined its constellation finder app for the Apple Vision Pro, giving you an immersive experience built for spatial computing so you can imagine you’re star gazing inside your home. The app also uses gaze detection to aim a laser pointer at planets and stars as well as hand gestures to zoom in or pull constellations from the sky.

Planner 5D

Image Credits: Planner 5D

Planner 5D, a 2D/3D home improvement tool, is bringing its interior design features to the Vision Pro. Users can view 3D design projects, customize items using their eyes and hands, explore a large catalog of furniture and home décor, as well as experience renders and 360 panoramas in VR mode.

Elite Hoops

Image Credits: Elite Hoops

Elite Hoops, the basketball play creation app, launched its visionOS app so basketball coaches can draw up plays and defenses and see their drills come to life in their living rooms.

Juno

Since YouTube decided not to build an app for the Vision Pro, indie developer Christian Selig, best known for the third-party Reddit client Apollo, made one instead. The $5 Juno app uses YouTube’s embed API to load videos in a web view and offers controls for playback. (Read more about Juno here).

Image Credits: Christian Selig

Söka

Söka is a goal tracker app where you can make different bucket lists and track them. It lets you do things like marking countries that you have visited on a virtual map, browsing photos to add to your goal with Unsplash integration and discovering new activities.

Image Credits: Söka

Meditation

Zenitzer

Vision Pro is launching with Apple’s mindfulness. But if you are looking for other apps, Zenitzer has features like meditation timers, daily tracking and immersive sounds for your session.