What are Apple's limits?
| Field | Limit | Change it without a new version? |
|---|---|---|
| App name | 30 characters, and at least two | No |
| Subtitle | 30 characters | No |
| Keywords | 100 bytes | No |
| Promotional text | 170 characters | Yes, any time |
| Description | 4,000 characters, plain text | No |
| What's New | 4,000 characters, not shown for a first version | No |
All from Apple's App Store Connect Help and its product page guide, checked October 16, 2026.
Why are keywords counted in bytes?
App Store Connect Help says the keyword field takes up to 100 bytes. Apple's search guide says 100 characters. For plain English letters they're the same thing, one byte each. They split apart for everything else: an accented letter like é is two bytes, most Chinese and Japanese characters are three, and many emoji are four.
The counter uses bytes, the stricter of the two. If your keywords fit here, they fit in App Store Connect.
What does the keyword clean-up remove?
It follows Apple's own advice, and only ever removes:
- Spaces after commas. Apple asks for keywords separated by commas and no spaces. Each space is a byte you could spend on a word.
- A keyword twice. Only the first one stays.
- Words already in your name or subtitle. Apple says your app is searchable by app name, so repeating it is wasted space. A phrase stays unless every word in it is already covered.
- Plurals of a word you already have. Apple treats plurals as duplicates, so "habits" adds nothing next to "habit".
- The word "app". Apple's product page guide suggests leaving it out.
- Keywords of two characters or fewer. App Store Connect asks for keywords greater than two characters.
It never adds a keyword, and it never rewrites one.
A worked example
Here's a made-up habit app. Its name is "Pebble: Daily Habit Tracker" and its subtitle is "Build streaks you keep". Its keyword field reads:
habit tracker, habits, daily, routine, streak, streaks, app, planner
That's 68 bytes. After clean-up it's routine,planner, which is 15. Every word that went was either already searchable from the name and subtitle, a plural of one of them, or "app". That leaves 85 bytes for words people might search that aren't on the page yet.
What mistakes does this catch?
- Keywords that repeat the name. An easy way to waste the 100 bytes.
- HTML in the description. The App Store shows the description as plain text, so tags appear as typed.
- Launch news in the description. Put it in promotional text instead. That's the one field you can rewrite on launch morning without waiting for review.
What can't this tool know?
- Which keywords people actually search. Apple doesn't publish search volume, and we won't guess at it.
- Your category. Apple's search guide also says not to repeat words from your category, and the counter can't see which one you picked. Check that yourself.
- App Store Connect's last word. For unusual characters, its own count wins. If the two ever disagree, trust App Store Connect and tell us.