Mental Floss

The World’s 25 Most Popular Apps by Download

From TikTok to Candy Crush.

Ellen Gutoskey|
Since when is Netflix a social media app?
Since when is Netflix a social media app? | Anadolu Agency/GettyImages

If you downloaded TikTok sometime in 2022, you were in the company of roughly 672 million other people. It was enough to land the app at the top of the list of 2022’s most downloaded apps—a good 124 million downloads ahead of runner-up Instagram.

The stats are a combination of global downloads from Google Play and Apple’s App Store between January 1, 2022, and December 20, 2022. They were originally compiled by Apptopia and picked up by a number of other outlets, most recently Visual Capitalist (by way of Business of Apps).

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has another app in the top five: CapCut, a video-editing app popular among TikTok users. It came in fourth place with 357 million new downloads, behind messaging app WhatsApp—one of several platforms on the list owned by Meta, along with WhatsApp Business, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and Facebook Lite (a pared-down version of Facebook that uses less data and requires less storage space).

But people aren’t just downloading social media and communication apps. There are also some high-performing games, including Subway Surfers, Stumble Guys, and Candy Crush Saga; streaming services like Netflix and Disney+; and plenty of shopping platforms, from SHEIN to Amazon. 

Certain apps weren’t downloaded quite often enough to crack the top 25, but still came out on top in their individual categories—like McDonald’s, whose 127 million downloads made it the number one food and drink app; and Duolingo, which took the blue ribbon in education apps with 98 million global downloads.

See the top 25 overall performers below, and check out more takeaways from Apptopia’s breakdown here.

  1. TikTok // 672 million
  2. Instagram // 548 million
  3. WhatsApp // 424 million
  4. CapCut // 357 million
  5. Snapchat // 330 million
  6. Telegram // 310 million
  7. Subway Surfers // 304 million
  8. Facebook // 298 million
  9. Stumble Guys // 254 million
  10. Spotify // 238 million
  11. SHEIN // 229 million
  12. Meesho // 210 million
  13. Messenger // 210 million
  14. Roblox // 208 million
  15. Shopee // 203 million
  16. WhatsApp Business // 198 million
  17. Amazon // 195 million
  18. Netflix // 165 million
  19. Zoom // 163 million
  20. Twitter // 159 million
  21. YouTube // 154 million
  22. Facebook Lite // 151 million
  23. Disney+ // 147 million
  24. Shopsy // 141 million
  25. Candy Crush Saga // 138 million
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