App Store Optimization in 2026: a checklist for solo developers

My own app is a Mac app sold outside the App Store, so none of this comes from my own rankings. It comes from building a listing checker, reading Apple's documentation closely, and reading 5,920 recent App Store reviews of other people's apps. All limits below were checked against Apple's pages on 6 October 2026.

1. Character limits

What to do with that:

• Name: lead with the brand, then the job. "Brand: the job it does" is the usual shape. The words after the colon are search words, so pick the one people type, not the one you like.
• Subtitle: a second set of search words, written for humans. It sits under the name on every search result. Don't repeat a word from the name.
• Keywords: count bytes, not characters. Apple's App Store Connect page says 100 bytes. For English that's the same as characters. For Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Hindi, one character is usually 3 bytes in UTF-8, so the field holds about a third as much.
• Promotional text: use it, change it often. It's the only text you can update without submitting a build. Apple says plainly that it doesn't affect search ranking, so put a reason to download there, not keywords.
• Description: write it for the person who already tapped. Apple's search page lists what search reads (name, subtitle, keywords, primary category) and the description isn't on that list. Short paragraphs, with the opening lines doing the selling, because only the start shows before "more".

I built a free App Store character counter for exactly this step; no login, it runs in your browser. It counts each field the way the store does, shows keyword bytes, and flags words you've repeated across fields.

2. Keyword field rules

Straight from Apple's search page: terms are separated by commas with no spaces after them, and you can use spaces inside a phrase (Property,House,Real Estate).

• Commas, no spaces after them. habit,streak,routine, not habit, streak, routine. Each space is a byte you lost.
• Don't repeat words from your name, subtitle or category. Apple's words: "Don't repeat any words included in your app name, subtitle, or category." They're already indexed.
• Don't add plurals of words you already have. Apple treats "climb" and "climbs" as duplicates.
• No competitor names, no other company names. Apple's App Store Connect help says names of other apps or companies aren't allowed.
• Each keyword longer than two characters. Also from the App Store Connect help page.
• Single words over phrases, mostly. If "sleep" and "tracker" are both in the field, you don't need "sleep tracker" as well. Apple's own example uses phrases, so this is a judgement call, not a rule: spend bytes on new words first.

3. Screenshots

• Up to 10 per device size, JPEG or PNG, no transparency (screenshot specifications).
• Know the required size. On 6 October 2026, Apple's page required at least one screenshot for "iPhone with Dynamic Island (medium display)": 1179 × 2556 or 1206 × 2622 portrait. The large-display sizes (1260 × 2736, 1290 × 2796, 1320 × 2868) are still accepted. If your UI is the same across sizes, Apple scales the highest one down for smaller devices. If your app runs on iPad, a 13-inch set (2064 × 2752 or 2048 × 2732) is required too.
• The first three do the work. Apple's product page guide says the first one to three screenshots show in search results when there's no app preview. Assume most people never swipe past those.
• One message per screenshot, written as an outcome. "Three things today, done" beats "Smart task prioritisation".
• Use your reviewers' words for the captions. People describe the moment before your app helped far better than you do. In the 300 recent habit-tracker reviews I read, how the app looks and feels came up in 54 reviews (48 of them 4 or 5 stars), more than any single feature. That's a screenshot about the look, not a feature grid.
• Optional: an app preview video. Up to three, up to 30 seconds each, footage captured on the device.

To see what competitors put in their first three, the free screenshot downloader saves any app's screenshots at full size.

4. Ratings: when to ask

• Use the system prompt. In SwiftUI that's the requestReview environment action (RequestReviewAction); in UIKit, AppStore.requestReview(in:).
• Know the cap. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines say the system shows the prompt at most three times per app in a 365-day period. You decide when to ask; Apple decides whether it shows.
• Ask after a win, never on first launch. Apple's guidance: ask "when they complete a game level or a significant task", and avoid "first launch or during onboarding".
• Never right after the paywall. This one is from the reviews, not Apple. In 299 recent sleep-tracker reviews, price, trials and being charged came up in 87, and only 13 of those were 4 or 5 stars. In habit trackers, "free trial" and "first day" were among the most repeated phrases in complaints. Money moments produce one-star reviews. Success moments produce five.
• Reply to reviews in App Store Connect, especially the specific ones. A reply to "lost years of data" with what you fixed is a public answer to everyone who reads that review.

5. Localisation on a zero budget

• Localise the listing before the app. Apple's guide says you can translate your name and tailor keywords per market, and the App Store Connect languages are separate from the languages in your binary. Metadata is a few hundred words; the app may be thousands.
• Start with one or two markets where your category already sells, not ten. Check the top charts in that storefront for your category first.
• Keywords per language, not a translation of your English list. People search differently. A machine translation is a fine first draft; a native speaker checking 100 bytes of keywords is a small, cheap ask on a forum or from a friend.
• Unverified, often repeated: ASO blogs say some storefronts index more than one language (for example, that the US store also reads a Spanish (Mexico) listing), which would give you a second keyword field. I couldn't find Apple documenting this. Treat it as a test, not a fact.

6. Product page optimisation for small apps

Product page optimisation lets you test up to three alternate versions of your icon, screenshots and preview videos against your original, for up to 90 days. Screenshot and video tests don't need a new app version; icon tests do, because every icon must be in the binary.

• Test one thing. Change only the first screenshot, or only the icon. If you change everything, a win teaches you nothing.
• One treatment, not three, if you're small. Traffic is split across treatments. With a few hundred page views a week, three treatments may never reach a confident result. Apple suggests waiting for at least 90% confidence before applying a winner.
• Custom product pages are a different tool. You can publish up to 70 extra versions of your page with their own screenshots and promotional text, each with its own URL (custom product pages). Useful when you link from a specific post or community: send the people from one Reel to a page with the screenshots they just saw. They can also be assigned keywords and appear in search.

7. The monthly 30-minute review

Put it in the calendar for the first Monday of the month.

1. (5 min) Open App Analytics: impressions, product page views, conversion rate. Write the three numbers in a note with the date. Trends matter, single months don't.
2. (10 min) Read every review since last month. Copy any phrase you see twice into the note. Those are next month's screenshot captions and keywords. The free review exporter puts them in one table.
3. (5 min) Search your five main keywords on a phone. Note where you rank and who sits above you.
4. (5 min) Change one thing: a keyword swap, the promotional text, or a PPO test. One.
5. (5 min) Reply to the reviews that deserve it.

That's it. ASO for a solo developer is mostly not breaking the rules above and then changing one thing a month, long enough to see what moved. Once the listing is in shape, the guides cover getting people to it from Instagram, and the Reel ideas by category pages show what reviewers in your category talk about.

How this post was made

An AI assistant helped draft this checklist from my notes and the review data behind the category pages. Every Apple limit and rule was checked against the linked Apple pages on 6 October 2026, and I checked the rest. Apple changes these pages; if something here is out of date, email hello@slideeasy.app.