How to get your app featured on the App Store

One Game of the Day feature drove a +470% uplift in organic installs and a +540% uplift in organic revenue for a single title (AppTweak, 2025). Featuring is the rare ASO lever that doesn't just spike for a day — it compounds for weeks afterward. And since November 2024, it stopped being something you wait and hope for.

Most teams still treat getting featured as luck: build a good app, ship it, and pray an Apple editor stumbles across it. That's not how the system works now. You pitch the editorial team directly, they score your pitch against a known set of criteria, and timing decides whether the door is even open. This is the full process — what Apple looks for, how to submit a nomination, and when to send it.

What does "getting featured" actually mean in 2026?

Getting featured means Apple's human editors choose to showcase your app in the store's curated surfaces — the Today tab's daily Stories and App/Game of the Day, themed collections on the Apps and Games tabs, and In-App Event cards. It is distinct from search ranking: editors pick featuring, the algorithm picks search results. Browse and recommendation surfaces like these account for roughly 18% of installs across both stores (AppTweak, 2026).

That distinction matters because the two are won in completely different ways. You earn search ranking with metadata and post-install behavior; you earn featuring with craft, story, and timing pitched to a person. Featuring is also localized and regionally curated — Apple's editors in each storefront pick what's relevant to their market, which is why a feature in the US and a feature in Japan are separate decisions, often with different creative behind them.

There's no single "featured" badge to chase, either. Placements range from a full-screen Today Story (the most coveted) to inclusion in a "New apps we love" collection to an In-App Event card surfaced to people who already follow your category. Each is a different size of spotlight, and your nomination can aim at the one that fits what you're shipping.

Why is getting featured worth the effort?

A feature is the largest single-day organic spike most apps will ever see — and unlike a paid burst, it keeps paying out. The canonical case is Pixel Federation's Train Station 2, whose Game of the Day feature drove a +470% uplift in organic installs and a +540% uplift in organic revenue (AppTweak, 2025). The revenue lift outran the install lift, which tells you featured traffic converts and monetizes, not just downloads and disappears.

The compounding is the part teams underestimate. A feature generates a wave of installs, sessions, and fresh reviews in a short window, and those signals keep feeding the algorithmic surfaces — search ranking and "you might also like" recommendations — after the feature ends. So a feature often raises your baseline rather than producing a clean spike and a return to zero. For funded apps trying to manufacture momentum on a timeline, that compounding halo is exactly the kind of credible, organic signal a paid campaign can't buy — and the Apple badge carries a PR and trust halo on top.

What does Apple's editorial team actually look for?

Apple scores every Featuring Nomination on seven criteria: user experience, UI design, innovation, uniqueness, accessibility, localization, and product page quality (Apple Developer, 2026). There's no public checklist or point threshold, but these are the axes editors grade against — and a rating gate sits underneath all of them. Around 90% of featured apps maintain an average rating of 4.0★ or higher, and apps below 3.5★ are rarely considered at all (AppTweak, 2025).

It helps to read the seven criteria as questions you can self-assess against. User experience: is the app cohesive, intuitive, and genuinely useful? UI design: are the visuals and interactions beautiful and considered? Innovation and uniqueness: does it do something new, or do a familiar thing distinctly well? Accessibility: does it support VoiceOver, Dynamic Type, and the rest — a value Apple actively rewards? Localization: is it adapted for the markets you want featuring in? Product page quality: do the icon, screenshots, and preview hold up? Raise your standing on each and you raise your odds.

Two things tilt the table further in your favor. Editors lean toward apps that align with Apple's own values — accessibility, privacy, education, the environment, inclusion — and toward apps that adopt new Apple technology early, whether that's an Apple Intelligence feature or the latest iOS capabilities, because novelty gives them a story to tell. It also pays to ship for the whole ecosystem: 79% of apps and games chosen for the Today section are available on both iPhone and iPad (Apple Developer, 2026). The rating gate is the prerequisite, which is why we treat ratings and reviews management as foundational, and product page quality is one reason conversion optimization belongs in any featuring plan.

How do App Store Connect Featuring Nominations work?

Since November 2024, you pitch the editorial team directly through Featuring Nominations in App Store Connect (Apple Developer, 2026). You choose a nomination type — App Launch, App Enhancements, or New Content — and then write a description that is the entire submission. There's no portfolio upload or pitch deck; the words you write are what the editor reads.

That description should tell the editorial team three things: what's changing, why it matters to users, and what's notable about how you built it. You can attach optional context to sharpen it — up to 10 related apps from your developer account, the platforms and target countries you're aiming at, a linked In-App Event, and up to five supplemental URLs (a press kit, a demo video, a design write-up). Game developers got an extra lever in 2026: you can now propose a limited-time offer or in-game discount to the editors through a nomination.

When should you submit — and what should you tie it to?

Submit your nomination at least three weeks before your launch, update, or in-app event; for wider or seasonal consideration, Apple recommends submitting up to three months in advance (Apple Developer, 2026). For major seasonal or cultural moments, pitch four to six weeks ahead so editors can slot you into their planning. The more ambitious the placement, the more lead time it needs. Featuring lands best as part of a wider pre-launch marketing plan that builds momentum before day one.

Timing is only half of it — the other half is the hook. A nomination with no moment behind it ("we'd just like to be featured") gives editors no reason to act. Anchor it to something real: a launch, a meaningful update, a redesign, a seasonal beat, or an In-App Event. The strongest featuring programs run on a calendar, mapping nominations to the product roadmap a quarter out so there's always a credible reason to pitch. That foresight is also what lets you localize the story for each market you're targeting — work that localization across your priority markets is built to support.

How do In-App Events boost your featuring odds?

In-App Events are one of the highest-leverage featuring surfaces available, because their cards can appear in editorially curated selections and personalized recommendations across the Today, Games, and Apps tabs — and you can share an event with Apple's editors directly for promotional consideration (Apple Developer, 2026). An event gives the editorial team a timely reason to surface you, which is precisely what curators are looking for.

Events also come with their own analytics, so you can prove what's working: event impressions, event details page views, and downloads attributed to the card all show up in App Store Connect. Use them to refine your event creative the same way you'd refine screenshots. The highest-return play is to pair an In-App Event with a Featuring Nomination — the event is the "what's happening," the nomination is the pitch — and to run events on a regular cadence rather than once. Recurring events keep giving editors fresh moments to consider, and the event copy itself is a small ASO surface, which is why we fold it into keyword and metadata work.

How do you make your product page "feature-ready"?

Product page quality is one of the seven scored criteria, so the page you send featured traffic to has to convert — a feature is wasted on a listing that doesn't. That means a cohesive icon, a strong first one or two screenshots, a preview video, and localized metadata. The benchmark to hold in mind: the average conversion rate in the US App Store was about 8.56% in 2025, with wide variance by category (AppTweak, 2025). A feature floods your page with visitors; your page decides what that flood is worth.

Editors judge the page first, then your future users do — so the same craft serves both. Lead with a first screenshot that communicates the core value in a glance, keep the icon and screenshot set visually cohesive (editors notice incoherence instantly), and use a preview video to show motion the stills can't. Localize the creative, not just the words: localized listings are both a featuring criterion and a proven conversion lever. The metadata discipline that makes a page rank is the same discipline that makes it convert — our guide to spending your title and metadata well covers the craft editors notice, and it's a core part of conversion-rate optimization.

What are the do's and don'ts of getting featured?

Here's the whole playbook compressed into a cheat sheet. The pattern underneath every "do" is the same: give the editor a quality app, a clear story, and enough lead time to act on it. The pattern under every "don't" is the opposite — friction, vagueness, or a reason to pass.

Featuring is one earned-discovery channel, not a strategy on its own — it sits inside your broader iOS app marketing plan alongside search, paid, and retention. If you'd rather have someone score your app against all seven criteria, check whether your rating clears the gate, and build the nomination calendar for you, that's exactly what a free ASO audit is for. And if you also ship on Android, the editorial logic differs from Google's more metrics-driven approach — our breakdown of how featuring differs across the App Store and Google Play maps the split.

The bottom line

Getting featured on the App Store is a craft you can run on purpose, not a prize you wait for. Editors pick it, they score your nomination on seven known criteria, and a 4.0★ rating gate sits under everything. The practical order of operations:

• Get your fundamentals to featuring standard first — rating at 4.0★+, a cohesive product page, accessibility support, and a fast, crash-free build.
• Write the nomination as a pitch, not a form: what's changing, why it matters, and what's notable — anchored to a real launch, update, or In-App Event.
• Submit early — 3 weeks minimum, up to 3 months for big or seasonal moments — and localize the story for the storefronts you want to win.