You are in App Store Connect with a build uploaded and about fourteen fields between you and Submit for Review. Each has a cap, some have rules that bounce a submission, and a few decide whether anyone finds the app. Most checklists for this moment are organized by phase — research, metadata, creative, launch — which is the right order to do the work in and the wrong order to check it in, because the form does not ask in that order.
This one runs in the order the form does. Every cap below was fetched from Apple's own pages on 9 September 2026 and is quoted, not remembered; the same numbers sit in this site's code as FIELD_LIMITS and MAX_NOTES_CHARS, verified against App Store Connect Help, and the tickable 50-point version at /aso-checklist uses them too. Where Apple says nothing, the checklist says so instead of guessing.
The short version: Apple documents every cap, names four fields that search matches — "title, subtitle, keywords, and primary category" — documents one field as not affecting ranking, and publishes no weight, no threshold and no volume for any of it.
Two reference pages, three kinds of field
Apple splits the listing across two App Store Connect Help references. App information holds what is set once per app; platform version information holds what is set per version. A third group changes with no submission at all.
App information
Name. "The name must be at least two characters and no more than 30 characters." Search matches on it — Apple's App Store search page lists "your app's title" first among the text-relevance fields. Check: the count on the listing kit, which validates against the same 30.
Subtitle. "This can't be longer than 30 characters." Also on Apple's matched-fields list, and per Apple's product-page overview "You can update your subtitle when submitting a new version of your app." It is not in Apple's public API — verified across 133 result objects for the keyword-field post, where the key does not exist rather than being empty — so no tool can show you a rival's.
Primary and secondary category. The reference says only "The categories that best describe your app." The search page says more: "Your primary category and optional secondary category are indexed by our search algorithm", and Apple's categories page makes the primary one "the category in which the app appears when people browse the App Store or filter search results". Check: where your rivals actually sit, on the app directory.
Age rating. "This property is required", "set at the app level" and "applied across all platforms". The age ratings reference names six values — 4+, 9+, 13+, 16+, 18+ and Unrated — and says "Apple generates appropriate ratings based on your answer to the age rating questionnaire." Apple does not publish the mapping from answers to tier, so the age rating planner prepares your answers and refuses to predict the result.
Privacy. Two items. The privacy policy URL is "Required for iOS and macOS apps". The App Privacy Details questionnaire "is required to submit new apps and app updates" and covers "the practices of third-party partners whose code you integrate into your app" — your analytics and ad SDKs are your declaration. Check: the privacy label planner and the privacy policy generator.
Version information
Keyword field. Apple's two pages disagree about its size. The version-information reference says "You can provide up to 100 bytes of content"; the search page says "Keywords are limited to 100 characters total, with terms separated by commas and no spaces." In ASCII the two agree; outside Latin script they do not, so plan against the smaller. The same search page documents the rules that usually circulate as folklore: "Don't repeat any words any words included in your app name, subtitle, or category" (Apple's own doubled phrase), plurals of an included word "are considered duplicates", filler like "the" and "to" "don't add any additional value". The keyword-field post covers the rest. Check: the listing kit for the cap and comma rules, keyword research for terms Apple's own autocomplete returns.
Promotional text. "This property can't be longer than 170 characters", and it is the one field with a documented negative: "promotional text doesn't affect your app's search ranking so it should not be used to display keywords." Its value is elsewhere — "You can update promotional text at any time without having to submit a new version of your app." Check: the 170 count on the listing kit.
Description. "Limited to 4000 characters. The description should be in plain text, with line breaks as needed. HTML format isn't supported." It is not on Apple's list of matched fields. What it does is convert, and mostly through its opening: the store truncates it behind a "more" link at a point that depends on device width and type size, so there is no fixed character count. Measured on this site with an off-screen probe, one live 2,612-character listing showed 115 characters — 4% — before the fold, because its first line ended in a newline and the store honors hard newlines. Check: the above-the-fold preview at three phone widths.
What's New. "Limited to 4000 characters." A version's notes are a public claim about shipped software, so the release notes writer keeps your changelog beside the draft and warns on filler rather than scoring the text.
Screenshots. From the screenshot specifications: "You can upload one to 10 screenshots in .jpeg, .jpg, and .png formats", and immediately after, "Images can't include alpha channels or transparencies." A PNG exported from a canvas carries an alpha channel whether or not anything in it is transparent, which is why the screenshot designer exports JPEG. The 6.9" iPhone set is the one to get right — "If screenshots with the accepted sizes aren't provided, scaled screenshots for 6.9" displays are used" — and the iPad set is "Required if app runs on iPad". The first frame matters most: "the first one to three images will appear in search results when no app preview is available". Check: the designer for pixel sizes, the screenshot teardown for your first frame beside the ten apps ranking for your term.
App previews. "You may add up to three app previews for each localization, per device size"; the preview specifications set "Minimum length: 15 Seconds" and "Maximum length: 30 Seconds". No tool here checks a video.
Icon. Not a field at all — it ships in the build's asset catalog, which the Human Interface Guidelines describe as representing "your app in places such as the App Store, the Home Screen, Settings, and search results". The layout size is 1024x1024 px, square: "the system applies masking to produce rounded corners", so do not round them yourself. Check: the icon teardown renders yours at 64, 48 and 32 px beside the row it will sit in.
Beyond the version
Localizations. The App Store localizations reference lists the languages a listing can carry, as a per-storefront table. Each localization gets its own text and creative under the same caps — the version-information reference counts previews "for each localization". The localization audit shows which storefronts still read your US listing; the localization priority ranks them by where you already have ratings — verified against WhatsApp in India, 7,996,710 ratings against a description byte-identical to the US one; the localized metadata writer drafts a listing per language, with a banner insisting a native speaker reads it.
In-app events. From Apple's in-app events page: a name "up to 30 characters", a short description "in up to 50 characters", a long description "in up to 120 characters", "up to 10 events published on the App Store at a time", "up to 15 approved events in App Store Connect at a time", and an event "can last up to 31 days and be promoted up to 14 days before its start date". They are submitted "independent of a new app version", which is the point. Check: the event planner.
Custom product pages. "You can publish up to 70 additional versions of your product page", varying "the screenshots, promotional text, and/or app previews". Keywords are assigned, not typed, and Apple asks that "each keyword combination is unique to a single product page". Check: the custom product page planner, which flags a term claimed twice.
Off-store. If the launch has a website, the badge page quotes Apple's marketing rules and links to Apple's download rather than serving the artwork, which Apple licenses to Developer Program members for their own apps.
The caps in one table
| Field | Cap | Apple's source | Checked by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | 2–30 characters | App information reference | Listing kit |
| Subtitle | 30 characters | App information reference | Listing kit |
| Keyword field | 100 bytes / 100 characters — Apple's two pages differ | Version information reference; App Store search page | Listing kit |
| Promotional text | 170 characters | Version information reference | Listing kit |
| Description | 4,000 characters, plain text | Version information reference | Above the fold |
| What's New | 4,000 characters | Version information reference | Release notes |
| Screenshots | 1 to 10; .jpeg/.jpg/.png; no alpha channel | Screenshot specifications | Screenshot designer |
| App previews | Up to 3 per localization per device size; 15–30 s | Version information reference; preview specifications | — |
| Icon | 1024x1024 px, square, unmasked | Human Interface Guidelines | Icon teardown |
| Age rating | Required; one of six values | Age ratings reference | Age rating planner |
| Privacy details | Required for new apps and updates | App Privacy Details | Privacy label planner |
| In-app event | Name 30, short 50, long 120; 10 live, 15 approved; 31 days | In-app events page | Event planner |
| Custom product pages | 70 per app; keywords unique per page | Custom product pages page | CPP planner |
What a checklist cannot tell you
Whether the copy is any good. A 30-character name can be inside the cap and say nothing. Every checker linked above counts; none grades, because a score over judgement teaches people to write for the checker.
What converts. Impressions and conversion rate exist inside your own App Store Connect and nowhere public. Apple's Product Page Optimization can test "different icons, screenshots, and app previews"; the test calculator says how long a test needs, but only your account can run it.
Any ranking effect. Apple says results are "based on a number of factors" and names them; it publishes no order, weight or threshold. So the claims a search for "ASO checklist" turns up — that conversion rate is a ranking signal you can optimize, that a description should carry a 2–3% keyword density, that a star-rating step moves conversion by a stated percentage — arrive without an Apple source. The density figure presumes the description is indexed; Apple does not list it among matched fields at all. If a change here moves your rank, that is an observation to record on a rank tracker, not an attribution.
Search volume. Nobody has it. Apple's autocomplete gives an ordering of suggestions — a proxy for relative popularity, not a count.
Reviews. This checklist has no item about asking for them, and neither should yours: incentivizing or manipulating ratings is Guideline 5.6.3, Discovery Fraud.
The work
Open the tickable checklist, which saves in your browser, and work through it in this order with the listing kit open beside App Store Connect. When every field is inside its cap and every "required" is filled, you have done what a checklist can do. What comes after is the part Apple does not document.