App Store Connect character limits
A complete reference for every character limit you'll bump into when filling out App Store Connect — for your app's metadata, in-app purchases, subscriptions, and URLs. Plus a live character counter for the field you're working on right now.
Quick reference
| Field | Limit | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
App Name name | 30 | Under the app icon in search, charts, and the product page |
Subtitle subtitle | 30 | Below the app name on the product page and in search |
Promotional Text promotionalText | 170 | Top of the description on the product page; editable without a new version |
Description description | 4,000 | Long-form pitch on the product page |
Keywords keywords | 100 | Hidden from users, indexed by App Store search. Comma-separated, no spaces after commas |
What's New whatsNew | 4,000 | Release notes for the current version |
| Privacy Policy URL | 255 | Privacy section of the product page |
| Marketing URL | 255 | Optional link on the product page |
| Support URL | 255 | Required link to support documentation |
| In-App Purchase Display Name | 30 | Shown to the user when purchasing |
| In-App Purchase Description | 45 | Below the IAP name in the purchase UI |
| Subscription Group Display Name | 30 | The grouping shown when comparing subscription tiers |
| Subscription Display Name | 30 | Each individual subscription tier name |
| Subscription Description | 45 | Tier description inside the subscription group |
| Promoted IAP Name | 30 | Shown on the App Store product page if the IAP is promoted |
| Promoted IAP Description | 45 | Below the promoted IAP name |
| Review Notes (App Review) | 4,000 | Hidden from users; private message to Apple's review team |
Live character counter
Notes on individual fields
App Name (30 characters)
The most important text in your entire listing for App Store search. Apple's algorithm weights name + subtitle + keywords heaviest, and the name highest of the three. Localizations have to fit 30 characters in the target language — this is where machine-translated names break (e.g., "Productivity Tasks" in English fits at 18 chars; the literal German translation "Anwendung für produktive Aufgaben" is 33 and gets silently truncated in some App Store surfaces).
Subtitle (30 characters)
Second most important search field. It's a separate field from the name, indexed independently, and shown directly below the name everywhere your app appears. Treat it as a sharper second sentence, not a tagline.
Keywords (100 characters, hidden)
Comma-separated list, no spaces after commas (Apple counts every space as a character). Don't include singulars + plurals of the same word (Apple's algorithm handles stemming). Don't include your app name or developer name — those are indexed automatically. Don't repeat words used in the App Name or Subtitle — already indexed there. The keywords field is where you put the words you can't get into the visible copy.
Promotional Text (170 characters)
The only field you can edit between releases without submitting a new version for review. Use it for time-sensitive messaging — sales, holiday-themed copy, callouts about a recent press mention. Not indexed by search.
Description (4,000 characters)
Apple recently started weighting the description more in search, but it's still secondary to the name + subtitle + keywords trio. Front-load the first three lines — that's what users see before tapping "more". Bullet points scan better than paragraphs on mobile.
What's New (4,000 characters)
Per release. Required when you submit a new version that changes anything user-facing. Often the most-skipped localization step — many teams localize the static fields once and then ship every release with English-only release notes. Apple's algorithm doesn't penalize this directly, but the conversion drop on non-English locales does.
URLs (255 characters each)
Marketing, Support, and Privacy Policy URLs are per-locale — you can serve a localized landing page or privacy policy by setting different URLs per locale, but most teams just point all locales at the same domain.
Edge cases worth knowing
- Emoji counts. Apple counts an emoji as one or two characters depending on the codepoint — a single-codepoint emoji like 😀 counts as one; a multi-codepoint emoji like 👨👩👦 (man + woman + boy joined by ZWJ) counts as 5 (or sometimes 8). If you use emojis, test on the actual App Store Connect form, not on a generic character counter.
- Newlines. Each
\nin the description or "what's new" counts as one character. Most editors don't show this; a 4,001-character description with 5 paragraph breaks could be 4,005 in App Store Connect's eyes. - Keywords + spaces. The keywords field counts every character including spaces. Stripping "todo, tasks, productivity" (24 chars with spaces) down to "todo,tasks,productivity" (22 chars) saves space for two extra keywords.
- RTL languages. Arabic and Hebrew descriptions display correctly in App Store Connect but some character counters miscount combining characters. When in doubt, trust App Store Connect's own field counter (visible after you save).
- Trimming on save. App Store Connect silently strips trailing whitespace and double-spaces on save. Counted differently before vs after save.
Where these limits come from
Apple documents these limits across App Store Connect Help and the App Store Connect API reference. They're enforced server-side by Apple — exceeding them returns a 422 Unprocessable Entity from the API and a silent truncation (or save failure) in the web UI. We've collected them here as one reference because Apple's documentation has them split across half a dozen pages.
Translate, fit-to-limit, push — in one click
App Connect Translate runs AI translation across all 30+ App Store locales and automatically fits each field to its character limit. Bookmark this page for the limits; use App Connect Translate when you have actual metadata to ship.
Try App Connect Translate →