App Store Subtitle

What Is the App Store Subtitle?

The App Store subtitle is a 30-character text field that appears directly below your app's name in App Store search results, browse pages, and your product page. It is one of the three metadata fields that Apple indexes for search — alongside the title and the keyword field. The subtitle is visible to users, making it both a ranking signal and a conversion tool.

Apple introduced the subtitle in iOS 11 as a dedicated field for a brief description of your app's purpose. Before this, developers had to cram both branding and descriptive text into the title alone.

Why the Subtitle Is Critical for ASO

Search Ranking

The subtitle is weighted heavily by the App Store search algorithm — second only to the app title in keyword relevance. Keywords placed in the subtitle have a stronger ranking influence than the same keywords placed only in the hidden keyword field. If you have a high-priority keyword that doesn't fit naturally in your title, the subtitle is the next best place for it.

Conversion

Unlike the keyword field (which is hidden from users), the subtitle is displayed in every search result. It's the first piece of descriptive text a user reads about your app. A compelling subtitle communicates your app's core value and encourages the user to tap through — improving your tap-through rate.

Subtitle Best Practices

1. Front-Load Keywords

Place your most important keyword at the beginning of the subtitle. If the subtitle is truncated in smaller display contexts, the front-loaded keyword remains visible. Example: "Budget Tracker & Savings Goals" puts "Budget Tracker" first.

2. Be Descriptive, Not Clever

The subtitle is not a tagline. "Your Money, Your Rules" tells users nothing about what the app does. "Expense Tracker & Budget Planner" tells them exactly what to expect and matches the terms they searched for. Save cleverness for the marketing page — the subtitle should communicate function clearly.

3. Don't Repeat the Title

Apple explicitly warns against duplicating words between the title and subtitle. Beyond violating guidelines, it wastes characters. The search algorithm already combines words across all metadata fields — a word only needs to appear once across your title, subtitle, and keyword field to be indexed.

4. Use All 30 Characters

Every character is a keyword opportunity. "Finance App" (11 characters) wastes 19 characters of ranking potential. "Track Spending, Reach Your Goals" (33 characters — slightly over, so trim to 30) is far better. Aim to use at least 25 of the 30 available characters.

5. Skip Articles and Filler Words

Words like "the," "a," "an," "and" consume characters without contributing to search ranking. Use "&" instead of "and," omit articles, and use commas or dashes as separators: "Expense Tracker & Budget Goals" instead of "The Expense Tracker and Budget Goals."

Subtitle Optimization by Market

The App Store allows you to set different subtitles for each localized version of your app listing. This is a significant opportunity. Your US English subtitle can focus on English keywords, while your German subtitle uses German keywords, your Japanese subtitle uses Japanese, and so on.

Languages with different character densities affect how much information fits in 30 characters. Japanese, Chinese, and Korean characters carry more meaning per character, letting you pack significantly more keyword content into the same 30-character limit. German compound words are longer but each word covers more conceptual ground.

Common Subtitle Mistakes

• Using the subtitle as a marketing tagline. "Reimagine Your Finances" scores zero relevant keywords. "Budget Planner & Expense Tracker" scores multiple.
• Repeating title words. If your title is "BudgetApp: Money Tracker," don't use "money" or "tracker" again in the subtitle. Use different keywords to expand your indexed vocabulary.
• Ignoring localization. Using the same English subtitle across all markets when you could have localized subtitles with market-specific keywords in each language.
• Too vague. "Simple. Smart. Effective." communicates nothing about what the app does and contains no searchable keywords.

How This Connects to RespectASO

RespectASO's keyword research helps you choose the right keywords for your subtitle. Score potential subtitle keywords on popularity and difficulty across markets to identify which terms deserve the high-value subtitle position. Keywords classified as Sweet Spots are the strongest candidates for subtitle placement — they combine the search volume to drive discovery with the low difficulty to make ranking achievable.