App Store Tags: Make Metadata Apple Can Label
App Store Tags are glanceable terms generated from your App Store Connect metadata, large language models, and human review. They already show in US search and on the product page. Here is how indie teams should manage them — and why screenshot copy is part of the input.
Quick answer
What are App Store Tags and how should developers manage them?
App Store Tags are short, glanceable terms that describe an app’s essential qualities. Apple generates them from App Store Connect metadata, artificial intelligence, and human curation. They appear in US App Store search results and on the product page, where people can tap a tag such as Sleep to see related apps. Tags are applied by default from your en_US metadata. You can deselect irrelevant tags in App Information; deselecting all of them may hurt discoverability.
- Currently displayed to App Store users in the United States
- Built from your metadata plus LLM generation and human review
- Appear in search and as tappable terms on the product page and search landing page
- You manage selections in App Store Connect > App Information
- Clear screenshots and descriptions give the model better raw material than keyword stuffing
On this page
Keyword fields still matter. They are no longer the only language Apple uses to explain your app in search. App Store Tags sit next to the icon as glanceable terms — Sleep, Invoices, Offline, whatever the system thinks is essential — and they are generated for you whether you designed for them or not.
Apple’s Manage app tags article says tags are based on the App Store metadata you provide in App Store Connect, artificial intelligence, and human curation. They appear in search results and as clickable entities on the search landing page and the product page. Today they are supported and displayed to users in the United States.
What a tag is for
Apple’s search documentation is consistent with Connect: search results may include app tags generated using large language models based on the metadata you provided. WWDC25 described the same idea: description, category, and even screenshots hold information that used to stay buried, and tags try to surface it. Humans review tags before they go live. You then choose which selected tags remain associated with the app.
| Surface | What the user sees | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| US search results | Glanceable terms next to the result | Deselect tags that misstate the product |
| Search landing page | Tappable tags that open related apps | Keep tags that match real intent, drop vanity ones |
| Product page | Tags on the page, tappable into a tag collection | Same edit list in App Information |
| Generation input | Not visible; Apple reads your metadata | Write clearer name, description, category, and screenshot captions |
You do not type tags like keywords. You supply truthful metadata, Apple proposes tags, you prune. Emptying the list is a discoverability risk.
How to edit tags without fighting the model
Required role: Account Holder, Admin, App Manager, or Marketing. In Apps, open the app, then App Information under General. Below App Store Tags, click Edit, review the selections, save. Tags are applied by default from en_US metadata.
- Keep tags that a stranger would use to find the job (“Timers”, “Habit tracking”).
- Remove tags for features you retired, never shipped, or only show in an unreleased experiment.
- Remove category tourists: a budgeting app should not keep “Meditation” because one illustration looked calm.
- After a major version, reopen the list. Metadata changes can refresh what Apple considers essential.
- Do not stuff the screenshot captions with the same noun ten times. That is not how Apple describes generation, and it makes the product page worse.
Screenshot captions are metadata too
Apple has said tags draw on metadata that includes information often buried in descriptions, categories, and screenshots. That is the opening for a screenshot tool. A caption that says “Plan” teaches nothing. A caption that says “Block deep work in 25-minute sits” gives a model and a human reviewer the same noun phrase a searcher might tap.
| Weak caption | Stronger caption | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fast. Simple. Yours. | Send an invoice in under a minute | Names the job |
| Community | Follow cooks, save the recipe | Separates social from recipes |
| AI powered | Rewrite a paragraph in your voice | Replaces a buzzword with an action |
| Track everything | Log sleep, see last night’s hours | One noun the tag system can reuse |
Tags should sound like the product. Screenshot copy is the most public, most visual version of that product language.
Sources, verified 2026-08-19:
Free tools that help here
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Tags are extracted. Give them something true to extract.
AppGrowthKit turns real app screens into captioned, store-sized screenshots so the first frames, the description, and the tags Apple generates are talking about the same product.
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