How to pitch your app to the editors who pick features.

Getting featured feels like luck: one morning your app is on the Today tab and you never found out why. But both stores run a front door for it. Apple has a nomination form inside App Store Connect, and Google has a featuring request form on its support site. Neither guarantees anything. Both are the only way to put your launch or update in front of the people who make that call, on your schedule instead of theirs.

What a nomination is, and what it isn’t

A nomination is a briefing note. You tell the editorial team what’s coming, when, and why it’s worth a story. It doesn’t buy a slot, it doesn’t affect search ranking, and it doesn’t go through App Review. Editors use it to plan, which is why both stores ask for weeks of notice rather than days.

So the editors aren’t grading your marketing copy. They’re deciding whether there’s a story and whether it fits a date. Give them both.

Where Apple’s form lives

In App Store Connect, open your app and look for Featuring in the sidebar, then Nominations. Click the plus button and choose Create Nomination. The first time, you’ll see a Get Started screen before the form. You need the Account Holder, Admin, App Manager or Marketing role, so a teammate with only the Developer role won’t see it.

You pick one of three nomination types:

• App Launch: a new app or game, including a pre-order.
• App Enhancements: new features, new functionality or another significant update.
• New Content: new content, offers or events inside an existing app.

Once a nomination is submitted, you can’t change its type or related apps. Nominations made in the form start as drafts, so you can write one, sleep on it and submit it later. There’s also a CSV import for teams filing many at once, but imported nominations are submitted immediately and skip the draft stage.

What the form asks for

The form is short, and each field is a chance to make the editor’s job easier:

• Nomination name: internal, so make it findable later (“v3.0 offline mode, March”).
• Description: the field that matters. Apple asks for enough detail to understand what’s changing, plus the purpose and priority of the nomination.
• Publish date: a single day or a range.
• Related apps: up to 10 apps from the same developer account.
• Platforms, countries or regions, and localizations: pre-filled from your listing, editable if the news only applies to some of them.
• In-App Event: you can attach one that’s approved or published, and Apple recommends attaching it as early as possible. Events only exist on iPhone and iPad.
• Supplemental materials: up to five URLs, which can include documents, art and a public TestFlight link.
• Helpful details: accessibility, inclusivity, priority, or anything unusual about the app or the team.

That last field is easy to skip and shouldn’t be. Many of Apple’s editorial stories are about people: who built it, why, for whom. A two-person team building a tool for a community they belong to is a story. “We are a passionate team” is not.

Writing a description an editor can use

Apple doesn’t publish a template, so what follows is our own approach rather than official guidance. Write the description the way you’d brief a journalist who has never seen the app, in plain sentences, no adjectives doing the heavy lifting:

• One sentence on what’s new. “Version 3 lets you plan a whole trip offline, including maps and transit times.”
• Who it’s for and what changes for them. The user outcome, not the architecture.
• Why now. A season, a holiday, a new OS feature you adopted, an event in your category. A date with a reason behind it is easier to schedule than a date alone.
• What makes it Apple-relevant. If you adopted a new platform capability, built for accessibility, or localized properly, say so plainly.
• How to see it. A TestFlight link in the supplemental materials beats any amount of description. An editor who can try it doesn’t have to take your word.

One nomination per meaningful moment. Filing a nomination for every point release dilutes the ones that matter, and the priority field only means something if you use it honestly.

How far ahead to file

Apple’s own pages disagree. The public “Getting featured” page asks for a minimum of two weeks’ notice and recommends up to three months for wider consideration. The App Store Connect help page for the form says a minimum of three weeks. Treat three weeks as the floor, and file launches and big updates as soon as the date is firm. If the date moves, edit the draft or update the nomination rather than filing a second one.

What Apple says it looks for

Apple says there’s no checklist, then lists the factors its team considers: user experience, UI design, innovation, uniqueness, accessibility, localization, and the App Store product page itself, meaning “compelling screenshots, app previews, and descriptions, as well as positive ratings and reviews.” Games get their own list, from controls to sound design.

The product page entry is the one you control completely, and it’s the first thing an editor sees when they click through from your nomination. A strong pitch that lands on raw UI captures with no headlines is working against itself.

Google Play has two forms and harder gates

Google doesn’t put a nomination screen in Play Console for most developers. Its Featuring Nomination form lives on the Google Play support site, and it’s aimed at new launches. Updates to existing apps are pointed toward Promotional Content in Play Console instead. The form asks for at least three weeks of notice, eight for a newly launched app, and your build has to already be in Play Console.

The eligibility list is explicit in a way Apple’s isn’t. For apps it includes a rating of 3.0 or higher, a launch within four months of the date you’re asking for, localization in the markets you want featuring in, and following Google’s design and core quality guidelines. Games need 3.8. The form itself reads like a publisher pitch: why featuring matters now, which markets you’re prioritizing, a link to a pitch deck, your marketing plan, and soft-launch retention numbers if you have them.

The second form is the Indie Games and Up-and-Coming Apps request, which feeds the Indie Games Corner and the Apps Innovation Corner. The apps side is narrow: a team of 1 to 30, self-funded or lightly funded, rated 4.0 or higher, launched within the last two years, and based in the United States. The collection is refreshed at least quarterly. If you fit, it’s the most realistic Google placement an indie app can ask for.

Underneath both forms sits a quality bar Google states directly: good quality makes you eligible for more discovery, great quality for featuring. Google also says that if your app exceeds Play’s bad-behavior thresholds on specific phones or tablets, it won’t be promoted to users on those devices. Check Android vitals before you pitch.

What happens after you submit

Usually, nothing you can see. Apple shows a green confirmation banner, and its help page doesn’t promise a reply. If you’re being considered, Apple says it may email people on your team with the Admin, App Manager or Marketing role to ask for promotional assets. That email is the real signal, so make sure those roles belong to someone who reads their inbox. If you land a Today tab placement such as App of the Day, the App Store Connect app sends a notification. Google’s indie form says it will follow up only if it needs more information.

Silence isn’t a rejection. Editors plan around calendars you can’t see, so file the next one when you have the next real moment.

An editor’s first click lands on your screenshots, so get those right before you pitch. ShotCanvas builds store-ready sets for both stores from your real screens.