App Store character limits: every field in one table

App Store character limits are short for the fields that matter most: the app name and subtitle get 30 characters each, keywords get 100, promotional text gets 170, and the description and What's New each get 4,000. In-app purchases get a 30-character display name and a 45-character description, and in-app events get 30, 50 and 120 characters for their name, short description and long description. Every number below comes from Apple's own documentation, with a link, and where Apple contradicts itself or says nothing we say so.

App Store character limits for the product page

These are the fields on your app's product page, in App Store Connect's App Information and version pages. "Indexed" means Apple names the field as an input to App Store search.

Field	Limit	Indexed for App Store search	When you can change it
App name	2–30 characters	Yes	With a new version, or while a version is editable
Subtitle	30 characters	Yes	With a new version
Keywords	100 (Apple says "bytes" in one place, "characters" in another; see below)	Yes	With a new version
Promotional text	170 characters	No	Any time, no new version
Description	4,000 characters	No (used for web search engines)	With a new version
What's New	4,000 characters	Not stated by Apple	With each new version (not available on version 1)
Support URL, Marketing URL	No published limit	No	With a new version
Privacy Policy URL	No published limit	No	App-level field, on the App Privacy page
App Review notes	4,000 bytes	Not public	Any time

Sources: the App information reference for name and subtitle, the Platform version information reference for promotional text, description, keywords, What's New, URLs and review notes, and Apple's product page guide for what can be edited when. App Review Guideline 2.3.7 repeats the name rule in plain terms: "App names must be limited to 30 characters" (guidelines).

On indexing, Apple's search page says results are based on "text relevance (matches for your app's title, subtitle, keywords, and primary category)" plus user behaviour. It also says outright that "promotional text doesn't affect your app's search ranking." The description isn't on the list. Apple does say it uses your metadata to generate the LLM-written app tags shown in search, so the description isn't invisible, but it isn't a place to stuff keywords.

Limits for in-app purchases, subscriptions, events and custom product pages

These fields get less attention, and the limits are tighter than most people expect. A 45-character in-app purchase description in German is a real puzzle.

Field	Limit	Source
In-app purchase reference name	64 characters (internal only)	In-App Purchase information
In-app purchase product ID	100 characters, letters, numbers, -, ., _	same
In-app purchase display name	2–30 characters	same
In-app purchase description	45 characters	same
In-app purchase review notes	4,000 characters	same
Subscription group display name	No limit published	Auto-renewable subscription information
Subscription display name	No limit published	same
In-app event reference name	64 characters (internal only)	Offer In-App Events
In-app event name	30 characters	same
In-app event short description	50 characters	same
In-app event long description	120 characters	same
Custom product page promotional text	No separate limit published	Custom product pages

A few details that change how you write these:

• In-app purchase names and descriptions are localizable, and changes go through review. Apple says the existing text stays visible until the new text is approved, so a fix doesn't blank the listing.
• Subscription group and subscription display names have no published length, but Apple says they "must not contain control characters" or markup, and lists emoticons among the examples. Keep emoji out of them. We haven't found an Apple source for the 30-character figure some guides quote for group names, so trust the counter in App Store Connect.
• In-app events can be submitted with or without a new app version once your app is approved (Submit an In-App Event). Apple's in-app events page asks for the name in title case and both descriptions in sentence case. The short description shows on the event card "in places like the Today tab and Search", and Apple says events are discoverable through search. It doesn't say which event fields are matched against search queries, whatever ASO blogs claim.
• Custom product pages carry their own promotional text per localization, but no keyword field of their own. You assign keywords from your latest approved version's keyword list, and the page becomes searchable for them once it's approved and visible.

Does Game Center have character limits?

Apple doesn't publish text limits for Game Center achievements or leaderboards. The achievements reference gives a limit only for the achievement ID ("limited to 100 characters (assumes single-byte characters)") and caps points at 100 per achievement and 1,000 in total. The display name, pre-earned description and earned description have no stated length. The leaderboards reference is the same story: the leaderboard ID is capped at 100 single-byte characters, while the display name, description and the singular and plural score suffixes have none.

In practice App Store Connect still rejects text that's too long; it just tells you when you save or push rather than in the docs. Keep achievement titles to a few words and descriptions to one sentence, and expect the real limit to show up as a validation error. The full workflow for translating achievements and leaderboards is in our Game Center localization guide.

How App Store Connect counts CJK characters, accents and emoji

For the name, subtitle, promotional text, description and What's New, Apple's docs say "characters". Apple doesn't define the word further, and that matters, because software counts text in at least three different ways:

Text	What you see	UTF-16 units (JavaScript length)	UTF-8 bytes
Wetter	6	6	6
é	1	1	2
погода (Russian)	6	6	12
天气预报 (zh-Hans)	4	4	12
🚀	1	2	4
🇫🇮 (flag)	1	4	8
👨‍👩‍👧 (family)	1	8	18

What that means for each case:

• Chinese, Japanese and Korean. A CJK character is one character, the same as a Latin letter, in every field Apple measures in characters. That makes CJK fields roomy: 降雨雷达和每小时提醒 ("rain radar and hourly alerts") is 10 characters against 28 in English. Use the spare room in zh-Hans, zh-Hant, ja and ko for a second idea in the subtitle instead of leaving it empty.
• Accented letters and Cyrillic. They count as one character each. They only cost more if a limit is measured in bytes, which is where the keyword question below comes from.
• Emoji. Apple doesn't document how emoji count. Guideline 4.5.6 allows "Unicode characters that render as Apple emoji" in app metadata, so they're permitted in descriptions and What's New. A tool that counts UTF-16 units will report a flag as 4 and a family as 8, so if your own counter and App Store Connect disagree on a field with emoji, counting method is the likely reason. We keep emoji out of the name, subtitle and keywords entirely: they aren't search terms and they eat a limit that's already tight.

Is the App Store keyword limit 100 bytes or 100 characters?

Apple says both. The App Store Connect Platform version information page says "You can provide up to 100 bytes of content." The product page and search pages say "Keywords are limited to 100 characters total, with terms separated by commas and no spaces."

The difference is large outside English. A Russian keyword field of 100 characters is around 190 UTF-8 bytes, and 100 Chinese characters are 300 bytes. Under a strict byte rule you'd get roughly 33 Chinese characters.

The byte wording is probably a leftover. Babble-on, a localization firm, reported in June 2013 that iTunes Connect had moved from a 100-byte limit to 100 characters "for any language", including spaces and commas. That's a secondary source and Apple never announced the change, so here's what we'd do: write to 100 characters, and if App Store Connect refuses to save a non-Latin keyword field that your counter says fits, suspect the byte rule first and trim.

The rest of the keyword rules, from the same Apple pages:

• Separate terms with commas and no spaces. rain, radar, storm wastes two characters on spaces; rain,radar,storm doesn't. Spaces inside a phrase (Real Estate) are fine.
• Apple's help says each keyword should be "greater than two characters".
• Don't repeat your app name or company name. Your app is already searchable by both.
• No other apps' or companies' names.

Each localization has its own keyword field, and the words should be researched per market rather than translated. Our App Store keywords localization guide covers that in detail.

Writing tips for each field

• App name (30). Brand first, then one descriptive word or phrase if it fits. Apple matches search against the name, so Drizzlr: Rain Radar (19 characters) does more than Drizzlr alone. You can only change it with a new version, so don't experiment here.
• Subtitle (30). One clear benefit, using a search term that isn't already in the name. Apple's search page says the keyword field shouldn't repeat words from the name, subtitle or category, so plan the three together.
• Keywords (100). Singular forms only (Apple says skip plurals of words you already have), no category names, no "app". Fill the field; 12 unused characters are 12 characters of search coverage you gave away.
• Promotional text (170). Timely news: a sale, a new feature, a season. It sits above the description and you can change it any time without a new version, so update it more often than you think.
• Description (4,000). Only the first few lines show before "more", so they carry the pitch. Plain text only; Apple doesn't support HTML. Most of the 4,000 characters go unread, and translating the rest well is covered in how to translate your App Store description.
• What's New (4,000). Lead with the one change a user will notice. Apple shows it on the product page and the Updates tab, and a short, specific note reads better in every language than a translated changelog.
• In-app purchase description (45). Say what the buyer gets, not the product's marketing name: Removes ads, adds all themes is 28 characters.

Why translations overrun App Store character limits

Translated text from English is almost always longer, and short strings expand the most. IBM's internationalization guidance, as summarised by the W3C, puts European-language translations of English text over 70 characters at about 130% of the English length, strings of 21–30 characters at 160–180%, and strings under 10 characters at 200–300%. Those are averages across European languages, not per-language figures. The practical upshot: a 30-character name or subtitle is the length most likely to overflow, while a 4,000-character description has room to spare.

German and Finnish build long compound words that can't be broken up, which the W3C article calls out. Here's one English subtitle, translated literally and then rewritten to fit:

Locale	Literal translation	Count	Rewritten to fit	Count
en-US	Rain radar and hourly alerts	28	(original)	28
de-DE	Regenradar und stündliche Warnungen	35	Regenradar mit Wetterwarnungen	30
fi	Sadetutka ja tuntikohtaiset hälytykset	38	Sadetutka ja säävaroitukset	27
ru	Радар осадков и почасовые оповещения	36	Радар осадков и оповещения	26
zh-Hans	降雨雷达和每小时提醒	10	(fits as is)	10

Notice what the rewrites gave up: "hourly" went in all three. That's the usual trade, and it's a decision, not something a machine translation makes for you.

How to fit translated text into the limits

1. Translate the meaning, not the words. Decide which idea in the English matters most and write that in the target language. A subtitle that keeps one strong idea beats one that keeps both ideas and gets cut.
2. Drop connectors before content. Articles, "and", "for your" and possessives go first. Regenradar mit Wetterwarnungen works because "mit" carries the whole relationship.
3. Move the overflow to a field with room. If "hourly" doesn't fit the German subtitle, put stündlich in the German keyword field or the first line of the description.
4. Use the room CJK gives you. In ja or zh-Hans the same 30 characters hold a second benefit. Write a longer subtitle there rather than a literal translation of the English.
5. Count in the target locale, before you push. App Store Connect rejects an over-limit save, and if you're pushing 50 languages through the API, one rejected field is easy to miss. Loci checks every field against these limits before it pushes, and with your own Claude, OpenAI or Gemini key it can shorten an over-limit translation in place.
6. Re-check after every English change. A three-word edit to the English subtitle can push five translations over at once.

If you're localizing a listing for the first time, start with the App Store localization guide.

Checklist before you push

• Name and subtitle are 30 characters or fewer in every locale, and don't repeat words between them.
• Keyword fields use commas with no spaces, no plurals of existing words, no app or company name, and fit 100 characters (and still save in App Store Connect for non-Latin scripts).
• Promotional text is 170 characters or fewer. It's the one field you can fix later without a new version.
• In-app purchase descriptions are 45 characters or fewer and in-app event names 30, in every language.
• Subscription names have no emoji.
• Game Center titles and descriptions are short enough that you won't learn their limit from a push error.