Last updated on January 17th, 2026 at 09:40 am
Yaniv – Card Game Review
Yaniv is a Card/Travel/Casino game from Barak Edry, first launched in 1st June 2011.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 1,369+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Yaniv Stand Out
Yaniv is probably the best card game you've never heard of!
It offers quick and challenging fun with uniquely addictive gameplay.
It's very easy to learn, and has a great balance of strategy and luck.
Optimized for single hand use, Yaniv is perfect for quick sessions.
Enjoy online matchmaking matches and climb the leaderboards!
The objective of the game is to earn the fewest points in each round. The player with the fewest points at the end of the game is the winner.
HOW TO PLAY
- Reduce your hand’s value at all costs.
- Outsmart your opponents with wits, intuition and pre-planned strategies, .
- Discarding sets of equal ranking cards and sets of consecutive cards of the same suit to effectively lower your hand value.
- When you think you have the lowest hand, call “YANIV!”
- All players reveal their cards
- If your hand's value is the lowest, you win the round and your opponents get their hand value in points (points are bad).
- Be careful, if you call “YANIV” and an opponent has a lower hand you lose and get 30 penalty points on top of your hand value!
FEATURES.
- An easy to follow, Step-by-Step tutorial introduces new players to the game.
- Play online with thousands of players around the world.
- Play offline against smart and challenging computer opponents
- Invite your friends and challenge up to 3 players at once.
- Chat with friends and connect with leaderboard support for online matches.
- Earn 40 fun and exciting achievements.
- Today and All-Time leaderboards.
- Access player profiles by tapping on a player's name in an online match.
- Additional difficulty levels, game statistics, and modes are available.
- 3 Difficulty levels (Pro difficulty for Pro users only) & fully customizable game settings.
This Card game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Yaniv is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 17th October 2019
Recent improvements include:
- Fixed a tutorial issue when running on dark mode
Download & Availability
Yaniv is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We love playing Yaniv with real cards so we were excited to find this app version. Our family can play each other on our devices when we dont have cards with us or when one of us is traveling. Two thumbs up.
Today it stopped working on our phone and we so want it back.
Good gameplay and great graphics. Its not working at the moment though.
We like this game because our 22 year old brother told us about it and his friends told him and Im 6 and a half and we think Im better than him.
There was an issue with game not restoring our purchase but we were contacted via Facebook msgr and we are back to playing the most fun and our favorite card game.
We purchased the pro and we went to play a few days ago and it deleted all our info including friends and it prompted us to pay for the pro games again after we did so already.
While the deck is very obviously stacked (all those slap-down opportunities, that might encourage a buy-in, dont happen randomly. Neither do the unusual number of low, low cards that appear on the first play), this is a totally fun, easy game to play – a great waste of time! Almost always luck, rather than skill, determines who will win, in the free version. And for sure its a drinking game – earlier versions had prominent cocktails sitting in the sand. We assume they were removed to make it seem more family friendly. We like the music, but we wish there was a lot more variety, or at least more calypso tracks. Absolutely it needs as many voices as there are players – each voice dedicated to a specific player throughout. We cant believe this game was not a part of the whole worlds childhood. It wasnt a part of ours. Maybe this app will make it so. If you want to make it even more family friendly, add a toggle that would require players to do their own math. Thanks for hours of nearly mindless entertainment.
This is the best app in the App Store no joke it just needs a few bug fixes and its perfect…and more sounds when you call Yaniv we need voice chat please.
So we played this game on our dads phone and we loved it but we didn't realize you have to pay for the multiplayer thing and more features but all in all great game.
This app is very amusing and fun.
Easy mode seems too easy, we win almost every hand. Then normal mode is ridiculously hard. We seem to always draw high value cards while the computer players are constantly throwing out pairs and runs and winning within 4-5 rounds. It ends up becoming a frustrating experience.
We love the game however now frequently when we call a Yaniv it freezes our iPhone X. Need to hard reboot the phone. Very frustrating. Ive contacted the developer twice but no response. We thought it would have been corrected by now as its been happening now for about 4 months. We hope it is fixed soon. Came continued to freeze almost every time cant recommend.
Hello, Ever since we have upgraded to the latest version of Yaniv, invites stopped working and do not send push notifications to others. Our whole group of friends needs to be in the app in order to receive the invites. If not in the app, no one receives a push notification to play which makes it difficult to organize games.
We paid for pro but it stopped letting us play with friends no one will answer please help.
It freezes too often and causes us to quit and lose Plelase fix freeze problem.
Hearing nothing from developers after multiple emails & FB messages. When we win rounds in multi player & the other player abandons, the app thinks we did too & puts us on 7 days + cool down. They dont help with our account to unfreeze when we reach out so its very annoying.
This game started out fun, and then it just puts you on a constant downhill streak of losing. Its nothing like the real game at all. The cards that it gives you. Its just ridiculous.
Super impressed with the UI of this game. One ask though is on multiplayer to allow to turn off slapdowns. Thanks.
We love this game! Worth every penny. We wish they would bring back the different themes like space, food, underwater, etc… But we still love this game.
Fun game to play with real cards, and it replicates well on the screen! Quick entertainment for 5 minutes, or even an hour… Hah.
We are currently playing on our iPhone XS Max and it works wonderfully. We love how easy the app is to navigate. We would recommend to anyone and everyone.
Great Game for those who just want to destress and calm down, good game for when you dont have service.
Ok so first we love the music and background. It makes us think Im on vacation. Second it is just a fun game. We love card games and this one is one Ive never heard of before. Simple but fun.
Easily one of the best card games ever!!! Fast, fun, easy to learn yet challenging!! We love it.
We wanted to first address some negative reviews before writing our own… They are garbage. We have been playing this game for a long long time and it has always kept us coming back for more. It seems like if any little detail doesn't suit to someone's specific needs, they automatically rate it a few stars lower or just give it 1 star. They don't realize how hurtful it is to the app when they carelessly do that. In short, ignore the outliers and go ahead and download this game. Yes, it's limited free online play we believe per day, with some minor features being part of the pro upgrade as well, but at least you get to play, so there's no complaining. The pro feature is definitely worth it, as we have been playing for quite some time. Now to our own little review… We have seen this game become very well refined over time, especially since the game has migrated to an amazing multiplayer platform that's not associated with the Game Center. It has been off the App Store for a little while for that update and a bunch of other stuff to get ironed out, and the result is amazing. Animations, graphics, gameplay, everything is exceptional. Our only issue that we have found after being a tester and now playing the game is that if a player leaves during a game, it does not count as a win in statistics, nor does it give you points. Although we can see how people can work together to abuse this if it were "fixed," it's hair something small we wanted to point out in case it wasn't meant to be like that. Thank you for such a great game and for introducing yaniv to us.
We love the app but it definitely needs to be updated to fit the screens of newer iPhones.
We love this game. Its fast and offers several options for play. The developers could be a bit more responsive, but it is an enjoyable game, nonetheless.
Luvvv the game its fun its challenging and its addicting. Im playing 4 yrs now and still so enjoyable and a good way to relax n have fun. Now our husband plays. Dont know wat id do without it.
First downloaded Yaniv many versions ago. Now an addict. Glad it came back to the App Store.
In the last month it inundates you with a game app and you have to watch the 39 second app presentation. Its the same game over and over. If you wanted to download it you would the first time you see it. If we have to see it one more time, bye!!! Very annoying. We love the game but not worth that annoyance.
This is a great game but there seems to be a new flaw. Now when playing multiplayer with 3 or more players and we eliminate someone and they leave it boots us out also and we will have to go through a cool down period and the cool down periods are accumulative so it is now a day plus for the cool down for us. We were a beta tester for this game and helped with previous flaws but now we just hear crickets from the developers.
We like the old one where it could just be one on one and not us and robots.
The coding of this game is flawed. Our gf consistently gets dealt better cards.
Great game, but the algorithm for card drawing is completely unrealistic! You can tell when its letting you win and definitely when its out to get you.
Virtually unplayable because it freezes most games. Playing on an iPhone X.
The game is fine, but the spammy ads for gambling and slots are really annoying! Tone it down.
We paid for the pro upgrade, but its now unplayable without access to the most recent update. Please fix.
Loved playing this game on an older device a few years ago so decided to download it for ourselves but can't seem to open it at all even after uninstalling it and redownloding it several times.
When we open the app it turns black and stays like that! We like this card game and play it often so we were really looking forward to this app. Im very disappointed.
Love this game. We played it on our old iPod, but the version we just downloaded on our new iPod doesn't open!!! Crashes on IPod 9.3.
This is the funnest traditional card game we've ever played. Our wife and we love it. Thanks for continued updates. We were very happy to see an update after so long and we're hooked again.
We have been waiting soooo long to get this amazing game/app back to the store…keep up the good work…5 stars, no question.
This is one of the best card games ever . We missed it so much when it was down and am so happy it is back up. Join now.
Very upset when this game went down and took a long time to come back but it is back. Thank you. It is a great game to play while waiting and you have nothing to do. The game plays real quick, it is easy to learn but at the same time it is a challenging game. Slap downs make the game more exciting and fun.
Yaniv is easy to learn, quick to play and lots of fun with the multiplayer online or against the computer. This version has gone through lots of improvements And we highly recommended it.
Thanks Barak For creating a very user friendly YANIV. Great response time to questions and updates. Highly recommended for those that like easy card games.
Now that iOS 9 is out, the game is not playable. It crashes every single time a game starts. Will it be fixed? They haven't updated it since '13.
We have been playing this game for a couple of years now and we really enjoy, except for: 1) There has been a glitch for about 4 months now where the game just freezes up. Neither player can make a play and then it suddenly acts as if the other player just left the game and now you get some points. We don't want points given to us-we want to earn them. 2) Sometimes it takes a very long time to "find" another player. Perhaps if the bugs were worked out, more people would play the game.
Fun interactive game that brings u back to child hood like phase ten and UNO.
This is a really fun game. Its very addicting! But it needs to have different computer names cause it has the same ones. Other than that it's great!!:).
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.2.3
- Size: 72.26 MB
- iOS: 10.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Barak Edry
Last updated: 17th October 2019 | Genre: Card, Travel | Developer: Barak Edry