App Store Keyword Field: How to Use All 100 Characters

Short answer

The App Store keyword field holds 100 characters of comma-separated terms with no spaces between them. Don’t repeat words from your app name, subtitle, or category, skip plurals of words you already use, and leave out generic terms like “app”. Every character you save is room for a new word.

What are Apple’s rules?

Apple’s guidance on App Store search is short and specific:

• Keywords are limited to 100 characters in total.
• Separate terms with commas and no spaces. Spaces are fine inside a phrase.
• Don’t repeat words in your app name, subtitle, or category.
• Avoid plurals of words you already use, which Apple considers duplicates.
• Avoid generic terms that are too broad for your app or category, such as “app”.
• Don’t include unauthorized trademarks, celebrity names, competing app names, irrelevant terms, or offensive terms.

What does a good keyword field look like?

Take a fictional habit tracking app with this metadata:

• App name: Streakly: Habit Tracker
• Subtitle: Build a daily routine

Here is a wasteful keyword field, followed by a better one:

Before: habit tracker, habits, daily routine, streak, free app, goal, goals
After:  goal,reminder,planner,morning,journal,mood,focus,self,care,discipline,checklist

The first version repeats four words from the name and subtitle, includes a plural, adds “app”, and pays for spaces after commas. The second uses the same space for eleven new words. These examples are illustrations, so your own terms should come from keyword research.

Why do people split phrases into single words?

A phrase uses more characters than the words alone, and repeating a shared word costs you twice. Writing habit,tracker,planner costs less than habit tracker,habit planner. Developers commonly split phrases on the assumption that the store can combine words across fields, though Apple does not describe exactly how combinations work.

So split phrases when the words work apart, and keep a phrase together when it only makes sense as a unit. Apple’s own example keeps Real Estate as a phrase. After you ship, look at your rankings to confirm that the combinations you want actually rank.

How do you count characters in other languages?

Apple’s search guidance says 100 characters, while its reference page says 100 bytes. For English the two are the same. In Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and other scripts where a character takes several bytes, a string may fit one definition and not the other. The metadata checker warns you when that happens, but App Store Connect has the final say.

Keywords are set per language, so a localized listing gives you a separate 100 characters for that language.

How do you fill the field quickly?

1. Paste your list into the keyword field builder, with your most important words first.
2. Add your app name and subtitle, and the builder removes every word they already cover.
3. Copy the result, and review anything that did not fit.
4. Run the final string through the metadata checker.

Keywords belong to an app version in App Store Connect, so plan on shipping changes with a release. You can also assign keywords to custom product pages, using terms from your latest approved version. That sends a search to a more specific page, but it does not appear to add room to this field. See custom product page keywords for details.

Want to track whether a change worked? OpenASO keeps a daily history for each keyword and country.