How many characters can App Store keywords be?

100 per localization. Apple's product page and search guides say 100 characters total; the App Store Connect reference page says 100 bytes. Commas and spaces count toward the limit. For English and most Latin-script languages one letter is one unit, but in scripts written with combining vowel signs, such as Hindi, the counter in App Store Connect runs higher than the number of letters you see, so check the count in the form itself.

Should App Store keywords have a space after each comma?

No. Apple asks for terms separated by commas with no spaces. A space after a comma uses one of your 100 characters and adds nothing. Spaces inside a multi-word term are fine; Apple's own example is Property,House,Real Estate.

Do I need to repeat my app name or subtitle in the keyword field?

No. Apple's App Store Connect help says your app is searchable by its app name, subtitle, keywords and company name, and Apple's search guide says the primary and secondary categories are indexed and asks you not to repeat words from your name, subtitle or category in the keyword field. Repeating them spends characters on words the App Store already has.

Should App Store keywords be singular or plural?

Use one form, not both. Apple's search guide says plurals of words you've already included, such as climbs and climb, are considered duplicates. Which form to keep, and whether every language and irregular plural is treated the same way, is not something Apple documents; that part is ASO folklore.

Can I change my App Store keywords without submitting an update?

No. The keyword field belongs to the app version, next to the description, so an edit goes live when your next version is approved. Promotional text is the field you can change at any time, but Apple says promotional text doesn't affect search ranking.

Does the App Store description help search ranking?

Apple doesn't list it. Its search guide names the app's title, subtitle, keywords and primary category as the text it matches, and its reference says the description is used for web search engine results once the app is released. Apple also asks you not to add unnecessary keywords to the description to improve search results.

App Store Keywords: How the 100-Character Field Works

The keyword field in App Store Connect is a single line of text per localization, and nobody browsing the App Store ever reads it. Apple’s search guide says keywords “help determine where your app appears in search results.” Here are its rules in one place, with where each one comes from.

What are the rules for the App Store keyword field?

Rule	What Apple says	Source
Length	100 characters total per localization (the reference page says 100 bytes)	Product page, Platform version information
Separator	Commas, no spaces. Spaces are allowed inside a phrase: Property,House,Real Estate	App Store search
Word length	Each keyword greater than two characters	Platform version information
Don’t repeat	Words already in your app name, subtitle or category; the reference adds your company name	App Store search, Platform version information
Plurals	Avoid plurals of words already included; “climbs” and “climb” count as duplicates	App Store search
Avoid	Generic terms such as “app” or “game”, filler words such as “the” and “to”, special characters such as # or @ unless they’re part of your brand	App Store search
Not allowed	Trademarked terms, celebrity names, competing app names, irrelevant or offensive terms	App Store search, product page
Scope	One field per localization; part of the app version’s metadata	Platform version information

Apple calls improper keyword use a common reason for App Store rejections, so the last two rows matter for review as well as for ranking.

How does App Store Connect count the 100 characters?

Everything in the field counts: letters, commas and spaces. That is why the no-spaces rule matters. A field written the way people write lists, with a space after every comma, loses one character at every comma. Ten terms, nine wasted characters.

Apple’s own pages disagree on the unit. The product page and search guides say 100 characters; the App Store Connect reference says 100 bytes. The counter in the App Store Connect form follows neither exactly: it counts the way JavaScript measures text length, in UTF-16 code units. For English, the other Latin-script languages, Cyrillic, Greek, and almost all Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters, that is one unit per character, so the distinction never comes up. It does come up in scripts that write vowels as combining signs. The Hindi word किराना (grocery) reads as three syllables but is six units. A Hindi keyword field can look two-thirds full and already be at the limit, so trust the counter in App Store Connect over a text editor’s.

Which words are already indexed somewhere else?

This is where most of the wasted characters come from. Apple documents more of it than the folklore suggests.

Where the word appears	Searchable?	What Apple documents
App name	Yes	Named as text relevance (“title”) in the search guide
Subtitle	Yes	Named as text relevance in the search guide
Keyword field	Yes	Named as text relevance
Company (developer) name	Yes	App Store Connect help: your app is searchable by “app name, app subtitle, keywords, and your company name”
Primary and secondary category	Yes	“Your primary category and optional secondary category are indexed”
Promotional text	No	Apple says it “doesn’t affect your app’s search ranking”
Description	Not listed	Used for web search engine results after release; Apple asks you not to stuff it with keywords

The company name line comes from the FAQ on Apple’s view and edit app information page, and the reference page adds that you shouldn’t duplicate those values in the keyword list. So if your seller name is “Northwind Labs”, “northwind” is already working for you without costing a character.

A worked example: one wasted field, one fixed

A made-up app: Kestrel: Habit Tracker, subtitle Daily goals and routines, primary category Productivity. First draft of the English (U.S.) keywords, 94 characters:

habit tracker, habits, daily goals, routine, routines, app, streaks, reminders, best habit app

What those characters buy:

Term	Problem
habit tracker	Both words are already in the name
habits	Plural of a word already in the name
daily goals	Both words are already in the subtitle
routine, routines	Already in the subtitle, once as a plural
app	Generic word Apple tells you to skip
best habit app	Repeats habit and app; “best” is the only new word
8 spaces after commas	8 characters that do nothing

Out of 94 characters, the new words are streaks, reminders and best. The rewrite, 98 characters:

streak,reminder,checklist,planner,journal,mood,water,sleep,focus,discipline,self care,todo,morning

Fourteen words, none of them in the name, subtitle or category, no spaces after commas, one form of each word. It only works if the app really does track mood, water and sleep. Apple’s rule against irrelevant terms applies to the rewrite too.

What does Apple not document? The ASO folklore

Plenty of keyword advice is reasonable and still unverified. These are the claims I see most, sorted by what Apple has actually written down.

Claim	Status
Apple combines words from the name, subtitle and keywords into phrases, so single words beat phrases	Folklore. Widely reported from testing, not in Apple’s documentation. Apple’s own example keeps “Real Estate” as a phrase.
Plural matching works the same in every language, including irregular plurals	Folklore. Apple’s example is English (climbs, climb) and it says nothing about other languages.
Words in the app name count for more than words in the keyword field	Folklore. Apple lists the fields it matches, not their weights.
Some storefronts also search your keywords from other localizations	Folklore. Apple’s localization table lists additional supported languages per storefront (the U.S. includes Spanish (Mexico), among others) but says nothing about search.
The description is indexed for App Store search	Not documented. Apple doesn’t name it as a search factor.
Competitor names in keywords work if nobody notices	Against the rules. Apple names competing app names as not allowed, and reviewers do notice.

Some of the folklore is probably right. Acting on it is still an experiment, so change one thing per version and watch the results.

How do localizations change the keyword field?

Each localization gets its own 100-character field. App Store Connect accepts metadata in 50 languages and locales now that Apple added eleven more in March, including Bangla, Tamil and Urdu. Write each one for its language. People search with their own words, and a literal translation of the English field often lands on terms nobody types.

The English variants are a good example. English (U.S.), English (U.K.), English (Canada) and English (Australia) are four localizations with four fields, and Apple’s table lists a different one as the default language in each of those storefronts. Spelling and vocabulary differ (color and colour, cell phone and mobile), so the U.S. field pasted into the other three still needs a pass for each.

When do keyword changes go live?

The keyword field sits in the version section of App Store Connect, beside the description, so an edit ships with your next approved version. There’s no way to change keywords alone on a live version. That is the strongest argument for treating the field as a small, planned change each release rather than something you rewrite in a hurry. Apple also notes that metadata updates can take up to 24 hours to appear in every storefront.

Where AppMeta fits

I check every keyword field I ship in AppMeta, the Mac client for App Store Connect I wrote about in February. Its keyword checks run on the Mac against the metadata you’ve already entered, with no AI involved. They flag keyword words that already appear in the app name or subtitle, words repeated across keyword phrases, exact duplicate phrases, fields over 100 characters, and the same keywords copied across localizations of one language. That last check leans on the same storefront folklore as the table above, and the app’s Storefronts tab keeps Apple’s documented structure and the ASO heuristics in separate, labelled sections. It doesn’t detect plurals: “routine” and “routines” are two different words to it, so that one is still on you.

All the localizations sit side by side, so you can see the gaps without opening each one. If you want suggestions, AppMeta can ask an AI provider you choose, with your own key, or Apple Intelligence on the Mac.

How the App Store keyword field works: 100 characters, commas, and the words Apple already indexes