How pre-orders and pre-registration actually work

Both stores let people sign up for an app before it exists, and both install it on their phone the day it launches. That’s where the resemblance ends. Apple and Google differ on what you need ready before you start, how long the window runs, what happens if you slip, and who tells your customers when you do. Each one starts a clock worth understanding before you press the button.

Apple: a reviewed app with a date on it

On the App Store you set up a pre-order under Pricing and Availability by choosing “Publish as Pre-Order”, a release date, and the countries or regions to offer it in. For a brand-new app the date has to fall between 2 and 180 days in the future. Free and paid apps both qualify.

The part that surprises people: the pre-order doesn’t go live until the app has been through App Review. You submit a build, it gets approved, you click Release This Version, and only then does the pre-order page appear, which can take up to 24 hours to reach everyone. So an iOS pre-order isn’t a teaser for an app you’re still building. A reviewed binary already exists. You can keep submitting new versions during the pre-order, and customers get the latest one you’ve released for distribution, but none of it goes live before the date.

What people see is a limited version of your product page. It shows up in search, carries an “Expected” date, and has a Pre-Order button instead of Get.

Money works in the customer’s favour. Nobody is charged for a paid app until release day, and if you change the price in the meantime, each customer pays the lower of the price they accepted and the price on the day. A pre-order discount is therefore safe to run, and raising the price before launch earns you nothing from the people who already ordered.

Apple’s 180 days are counted from day one

You can move the release date, but not freely. For a first-time pre-order, Apple’s rule is that the new date must be within 180 days of the pre-order’s initial publication in that country or region. The 180 days aren’t measured from today. They’re a fixed budget that started the day the pre-order went live.

That turns your first date into a decision about slack. Publish with a release date 150 days out and you have 30 days of room to slip, total, for the life of the pre-order. Publish 60 days out and you have 120. Once the release date has passed in a region, it can’t be edited at all.

Apple also doesn’t contact pre-order customers when the date changes or the pre-order is removed. Its own guidance says to tell them yourself, and to leave the date out of marketing if it might move. Pull a pre-order and nobody receives the app or gets charged, but you can’t republish as a pre-order after the original date has passed, and once an app is released in a region it can never be offered for pre-order there again. (Existing apps entering a new region get a longer window, 2 to 365 days.)

Google: a listing on a 90-day fuse

Play calls it pre-registration, and it lives under Test and release, Testing, Pre-registration in Play Console. You do upload app bundles to a pre-registration track, but Google uses them only to work out which devices you support; they aren’t released to anyone and don’t go through a launch review the way Apple’s build does. You need a finished store listing and your app content declarations, and personal developer accounts created after November 13, 2023 have to meet the closed-testing requirement first.

The constraint is time. A campaign can last 90 days, after which you have to launch to production. The window starts separately in each country when pre-registration opens there. If you don’t launch within 90 days in any country, the campaign ends everywhere and no new campaigns can start. Pausing doesn’t stop the count: an inactive campaign is still held to the same 90 days. You can also run at most two apps or games in pre-registration at once.

Unlike Apple, Play has no release date to announce. Launch is the moment you publish to the production track, and pre-registered users get a push notification. Where they’re eligible, Play also installs the app automatically, which needs Android 6.0 or later, Play Store version 19.2 or later, and an account that isn’t a child’s or a managed work account. Size matters here: apps up to 200 MB auto-install over Wi-Fi or cellular, 200 MB to 2 GB need Wi-Fi, and anything bigger doesn’t auto-install. People on ineligible devices still get the notification, and Play retries the install once their device qualifies.

Your testers fall outside the funnel

One detail catches indie developers in particular, because their earliest fans are usually their beta testers. On Play, someone who already has a test version installed doesn’t get the launch notification, and someone enrolled in a test can’t pre-register until they uninstall and opt out. Switching a country with an open test over to pre-registration also stops new store-listing opt-ins to that test there. So don’t read a small pre-registration count as a lack of interest if your keenest users are already in the beta.

Rewards: one shot on Play, roll your own on Apple

Play lets you give pre-registrants a free one-time product. You get exactly one reward per campaign. It has to be a dedicated product created and activated before the campaign starts, it can’t be edited or deleted afterwards, and it can’t be a subscription. That last rule matters for subscription apps: you can’t hand pre-registrants a free month through this mechanism. Your app has to deliver the reward and tell the user about it, and Google warns that failing to deliver can get the app suspended.

Apple has no reward system. Instead, the app transaction carries a pre-order date (AppTransaction.preorderDate in StoreKit 2), so your code can recognise someone who pre-ordered and thank them or unlock something.

What you can measure

Apple’s App Analytics shows pre-orders over time, broken down by date, region and source type, and Sales and Trends adds cancellations, which customers can make from their App Store settings. Play reports pre-registered users and conversions, which it defines as pre-registered users who installed within 14 days of the app becoming available.

When to start each clock

Put together, the rules point to a schedule. This part is our judgement, not store policy.

On iOS, the gate is approval, so pre-orders belong to the last stretch. Once a build has passed review, pick a date you’d bet on and publish far enough ahead that the remaining slack covers a realistic delay. Since Apple won’t email your pre-order customers about a slip, keep a channel of your own, a mailing list or a social account, and keep the exact date out of anything you can’t edit.

On Play, start no earlier than 90 days before you’re sure to ship. Missing the window doesn’t just end the campaign; it stops you starting another. Because Play has no fixed launch date, you can time its production release to land on Apple’s date, so both sets of notifications go out on the same morning.

Keep the Android launch build under 200 MB if you can, so auto-install works over cellular for everyone who signed up.

The page that sells for weeks

A pre-order or pre-registration page is your store listing with the install button swapped out. For weeks before anyone can use the app, the screenshots and the first lines of the description are the whole pitch, and the people who sign up never see the onboarding you’re polishing. That’s the stretch ShotCanvas is built for: screenshots designed as one set, exported at the exact sizes each store requires, and published straight to App Store Connect and Google Play.