Your App Store listing
What merchants read before installing, and how it is published.
Separate from your code
Your listing (name, tagline, description, icon, screenshots, categories and links) is edited on the Developer page, under your app, and versioned apart from your releases. A new screenshot needs no deploy, and a deploy changes no word a merchant was shown.
What your app may reach is not part of the listing. The App Store reads it from the release a shop would install, the same list the consent screen shows, so nothing a listing says can soften it.
Writing it
- The tagline is one line on what the app does for a shop.
- The description is Markdown: paragraphs,
##headings, lists, bold, italic and links to https addresses. It cannot hold pictures; use screenshots. - An icon is square, at least 256 pixels across. Screenshots are at least 640 by 360, up to eight. Pictures are stored and served by Storeware, never fetched from your servers.
- Choose one category and up to two more, and up to eight tags.
- Give merchants a way to get support: a page, an email address, or both.
Publishing it
Publishing freezes the draft: its words never change again, and the next edit starts a new version. Its text is checked the way every listing is, and a listing that breaks the rules is hidden, with the Developer page saying why.
A public app's listing is read by a person at Storeware before merchants see it. While it waits, what the App Store showed before stays up. The reviewer approves it, or asks for changes and says what, in a conversation you answer on your app's Reviews page; you are emailed either way. An unlisted or private app's listing is published at once, after the same automated checks.
A listing appears in the App Store only while the app itself is published, open to installs, and public. An unlisted app has a page merchants reach by its link, and is never shown in browsing or search.
Releases that reach further
A release of a public app that asks for a new permission, event, host, panel, tool or field is read by a reviewer before merchants are given it. Your own shops and development stores run it at once; merchants keep the last approved release until then, and after it is approved each merchant still approves the wider reach for their own shop. A release that reaches no further skips the queue: the automated checks below decide it alone, within minutes, and it goes to merchants once they pass. If one fails, your app's Reviews page names the check and the fix, and you release again.
Your app's Reviews page shows where anything of yours stands in the queue, and how long reviews have taken over the last 90 days. Storeware aims to decide every review within 48 hours.
What the checks look at
- Whether an app reading customer or order data declares a
[privacy] url. - Whether the listing is complete, its links answer, and its words pass the listing rules.
- Whether the app checks signatures: if it is installed on one of your development stores, it is sent an
app.review_check.v1delivery signed correctly, which it should accept, and the same one signed with the wrong secret, which it should refuse with a 401.
When merchants leave
A merchant removing your app may say why, from a short list. Your app's page on the Developer page shows how many gave each reason in the last ninety days. It never says which shop.