2023 saw a vibrant app scene with several new entries making waves across various categories. While there seems to be a new app being announced every day and many more becoming daily essentials, here are some standouts from 2023 that gained significant traction, downloads, or massive popularity last year:

Social Media

• BeReal: Launched in 2019, BeReal is an anti-filter, anti-perfection social app promoting authenticity with daily candid photo challenges. This app gained popularity among Gen Z users seeking a more “genuine” online experience. As of November 2023, BeReal surpassed 100 million downloads worldwide, a massive jump from its 28 million installs back in August 2022. BeReal boasts over 25 million monthly active users as of January 2024.

• Threads: Launched in July of 2023, Threads reached 100 million users within its first week, driven by Instagram integration and the allure of a new platform dedicated to text and discussion similar to Twitter (now X).

Entertainment and Creativity

• Lensa AI: This AI-powered photo editing app transforms user uploaded portraits into various artistic styles using Stable Diffusion and achieved viral popularity with nearly 20 million downloads primarily due to the launch of their Magic Avatars feature in December 2022. The app received heavy criticism from artists and creators due to the fact that many of the AI generated images blatantly utilized artists work and even artists’ signatures without credit or permission. 

• CapCut: This free and user-friendly video editing app with powerful features and trendy templates, became a favorite among TikTok creators and casual users alike. CapCut reached 490 million iOS and Android users worldwide by August 2023, as reported by data.ai. This equates to roughly 25% of TikTok's user base.

Productivity and Tools

• Otter.ai: This AI-powered transcription and note-taking app that records and transcribes conversations and meetings gained popularity among professionals and students. Otter.Ai transcribed over 1 billion meetings, summarized 50 million meetings, generated 14 million registered users, and saw tremendous growth from it’s OtterPilot meeting transcription tool. 

• Bard: Google's AI-powered language model gained popularity for its ability to generate creative text formats, translate languages, write different kinds of creative content, and answer your questions in an informative way. It’s unclear how many users Bard currently has, but Google is aiming to reach billions of users.

• ChatGPT: ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022. It's based on a large language model called GPT-3.5While definitive user numbers are not publicly available, ChatGPT is estimated to have 180.5+ million users and over 1.7 billion page visits every month on average making it one of the fastest-growing applications in history.

This is just a glimpse into the many new apps that made a splash in 2023. Did you use any of these? We are big fans of ChatGPT and Bard. What apps or categories of apps do you anticipate will blow us away in 2024?