Apps where somebody else is in the file too
Shared documents, boards and designs, where the screen has to hold your work, the other person's changes, and the conversation about both.
Collaboration adds a third thing to every screen. There is the document, there is what somebody else just did to it, and there is the comment thread arguing about whether they should have. On a desktop those sit side by side without anyone thinking about it. On a phone they take turns, and the one that loses is almost always the conversation.
That is why a comment on a phone so often arrives as a notification rather than as something read in place. The thread is detached from the paragraph it is about, which is the one thing a comment cannot afford to be.
Each app here declares real-time collaboration in its own listing, so the list is selected on what the developers say their apps do rather than on an impression of how well they do it.
- 1
Figma
Figma, Inc.
The mobile app is for reviewing rather than building: opening files, playing prototypes, and commenting with every thread in one place. A design review is a comment attached to a region of a frame, and detaching the two — which is what a narrow screen does — removes the part that made it a review.
- 2
Google Docs
Google LLC
Documents edited, commented on and assigned in real time by several people at once, offline included. The margin is where the disagreement happens, and a document app that has nowhere to put a margin has to put the margin somewhere else.
- 3
Freeform
Apple Distribution International
A shared board with files of almost any kind dropped onto it, edited by several people at the same time. A board is spatial — the arrangement is the meaning — so two people working on one are both navigating a space, and seeing where the other one is working is the whole of staying out of their way.
- 4
Notion: notes, tasks, AI
Notion Labs, Incorporated
A workspace where the same pages are notes for one person and project tracking for a team. Nested pages plus other people's edits is two kinds of context at once, and the sidebar that keeps you oriented is the first thing to go when the column narrows.
- 5
Pages: Create Documents
Apple Distribution International
Word processing with real-time collaboration, built around templates and placed objects rather than a plain stream of text. Layout work is the case where seeing the whole page matters most, because the thing being judged is the arrangement rather than the sentence.
- 6
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Corporation
Documents drafted, edited, shared and commented on, with formatting and layout tools aimed at output that other people will print or sign. Tracked comments down the side of a long document are a conversation with a position in the text, and position is lost the moment the side disappears.
The selection and the order are ours. Each entry is written from that app’s own App Store listing, linked beside it, and this page from Apple's iPhone Duo product page. Drafted with AI assistance and checked back against those sources before publishing; the disclosure page explains how. The iPhone Duo has been on sale since 23 October 2026 and nothing here has been seen running on one, so what each entry says about the fold is an argument rather than a test.