Apple metadata · Verified 2026-10-12
The App Store keyword field
Use Apple’s private 100-byte field without duplicate terms, spaces, or imaginary volume scores.
In brief
Apple’s keyword field accepts up to 100 UTF-8 bytes. Use relevant comma-separated terms, avoid wasting bytes on repetition, and validate bytes—not visible character count.
Count bytes, not characters
ASCII letters usually consume one byte, while many accented and non-Latin characters consume more. The field can therefore look shorter than its byte limit in some languages.
Choose terms from product truth
Begin with the customer job, reviews, support language, store suggestions, and the words the product can honestly prove. Third-party popularity scores are directional estimates, not store ground truth.
- Remove spaces after commas.
- Do not repeat identical tokens already doing useful work in the name or subtitle.
- Do not add competitors or trademarks you do not own.
- Do not create grammatical keyword phrases at the expense of useful distinct tokens.
Validate the complete system
Read the name, subtitle, keywords, screenshots, and onboarding together. The field may influence discovery, but the visible page must still make the promise understandable and credible.
Primary sources
Rules and interfaces move. Recheck these sources before submission-sensitive work.