The 100 characters most developers throw away.

Every iOS app gets exactly 100 characters of keywords — the only part of the listing users never see, and the part most developers fill in at midnight before launch and never touch again. Here's how the field actually works, the five ways listings waste it, and a ten-minute rewrite that gets the characters back.

The strangest field in App Store Connect

The keyword field is pure index input. Shoppers never read it; Apple's search engine does. Alongside your app name (30 characters) and subtitle (30 characters), it's essentially all the searchable text you control on iOS — 160 characters total that decide which queries you can even appear for. Screenshots and descriptions win the install once someone lands on the page; keywords decide whether anyone lands there at all.

Two mechanics trip people up. First, the format: comma-separated terms with no spaces after the commas — Apple's own example is Property,House,Real Estate. Spaces are only for multi-word phrases. Second, the field is version-locked: you can only change it by shipping an app update, unlike promotional text, which is editable anytime — and which Apple explicitly says does not affect search ranking, so stuffing keywords there does nothing.

Waste #1: spaces after commas

The classic. habit, tracker, streak reads nicer than habit,tracker,streak, but every one of those spaces is a character Apple ignores and you paid for. A field with a dozen keywords and spaced commas burns eleven characters — more than a tenth of the entire budget — on typography.

Waste #2: repeating your name and subtitle

Apple already indexes every word of your app name and subtitle, and its guidance is blunt: don't repeat words that appear in your name, subtitle, or category. If your app is "Ledgerly — Budget Tracker" with the subtitle "Plan spending & save money," then budget, tracker, spending, save, and money in the keyword field are twenty-nine dead characters. That's a third of the field spent ranking for terms you already rank for.

Waste #3: plurals and filler

Apple treats singular and plural as duplicates — its documentation uses "climb" and "climbs" as the example — so listing both forms buys nothing. The same guidance calls out generic terms like "app" and "game" (too broad to rank for) and filler like "the" and "to." Add the perennial favorites best and free: even where they're technically indexed, you're competing against the entire store for them. A new app will never surface for "best" — but it can absolutely own "pollen forecast" or "split rent."

Waste #4: whole phrases where words would do

Apple permits multi-word phrases, but ASO practitioners have observed for years that the index builds phrases by combining the individual terms across your name, subtitle, and keyword list. It isn't officially documented, so treat it as strong convention rather than gospel — but the practical upshot is that budget tracker,budget planner (29 characters) is usually beaten by budget,tracker,planner (22 characters), which covers both phrases plus combinations the long form misses. Single words, packed tight, let the combinatorics work for you.

Waste #5: words that get you rejected

Apple lists improper keywords as a common reason for App Store rejection: trademarked terms you don't own, celebrity names, competitor app names, and terms with no relevance to your app. Sneaking a rival's brand into the field is the one keyword move with real downside and no reliable upside — reviewers check, and a metadata rejection stalls the whole release.

What to spend the 100 characters on

Once the waste is gone, filling the field well takes one focused pass:

Brainstorm thirty candidates. The problem your app solves (overspending, insomnia), the actions users take (scan, split, log), and the words real people actually type — users search "receipt scanner," not "expenditure digitization." Steal vocabulary from your reviews and support emails; that's the language your market uses.

Cut ruthlessly. Delete anything already in your name or subtitle, every plural, every generic head term a small app can't win yet. Long-tail phrases with modest traffic and weak competition convert far better than prestige terms you'll rank #200 for.

Pack what's left. Singular forms, commas, no spaces, until you're as close to 100 as you can get. An 80-character keyword field is a fifth of your search surface left on the table.

Google Play plays by different rules

Android has no keyword field at all. Google indexes your title (30 characters), short description (80 characters), and full description — so the keyword work moves into prose you write for humans. Weave your terms into natural sentences; Google's metadata policy explicitly calls out keyword stuffing, and a description that reads like a tag cloud damages the conversion the ranking was supposed to feed.

Or let the machine do the packing

This is one of the jobs ShotCanvas automates: describe your app and the AI drafts the full metadata set — name, subtitle, description, and a packed 100-character keyword field with the duplicates and filler already stripped — alongside the screenshot design tools. Generate a set, prune it with the checklist above, and ship it with your next update.