TL;DR. Featuring Nominations, in App Store Connect under Featuring > Nominations, let you submit an App Launch, New Content, or App Enhancements plan directly to Apple’s editorial team for consideration in Today/Games/Apps tab placements, charts, and curated collections. It requires the Account Holder, Admin, App Manager, or Marketing role — the same set that can submit In-App Events. Apple asks for a minimum of two weeks’ notice, and recommends submitting up to three months ahead for wider consideration across placements. This is a curated editorial track, separate from algorithmic search ranking — nominating an app doesn’t touch your keyword rank.
Most indie developers treat App Store featuring as something that happens to other apps, decided by an editorial team they have no way to reach. That was closer to true before Featuring Nominations existed. It’s now a real form inside App Store Connect, and submitting one costs nothing but the time to fill it out.
How do you ask Apple to feature your app on the App Store?
You submit a Featuring Nomination in App Store Connect: open Apps, select the app, and click Nominations under Featuring in the sidebar. Click the ”+” next to Nominations, choose Create Nomination, and work through name, type, description, and timing before submitting.
The required role is Account Holder, Admin, App Manager, or Marketing — Apple’s help documentation lists it explicitly on the nomination page. That’s the same four-role set that can submit In-App Events, so if someone on your team already has access to submit an event, they already have access to nominate for featuring.
The submission flow, once you’re in:
- Name the nomination — internal only, for your own tracking.
- Pick a nomination type — New Content, App Enhancements, or App Launch (below).
- Write a description — what’s changing, why it matters, and its priority, in enough detail for someone who has never used your app to understand the moment you’re describing.
- Choose a publish date or timeframe — a specific day or a range, read against your device’s local timezone.
- Fill in optional context — up to 10 related apps from your developer account, which platforms apply, countries/regions and localizations (pre-populated from your app but editable), any approved or published In-App Events to attach, and up to 5 supplemental-material URLs (design files, art assets, a public TestFlight link).
- Submit, or save as a draft to finish later.
Apple hasn’t published character limits for any of these fields — unlike the keyword field or subtitle, this isn’t a metadata field App Review checks against a hard cap, it’s a pitch to a human editorial team. Write it like one.
There’s also a CSV bulk-upload path (Import Nominations, using Apple’s downloadable template) for submitting several at once — but CSV imports are automatically submitted on upload with no draft step, so proofread the file before you upload it.
What are the three App Store featuring nomination types?
New Content covers new content, offers, or events inside an app or game you’re already shipping. App Enhancements covers new features or significant updates to the app itself. App Launch covers the launch or pre-order of a brand-new app or game.
Picking the right one matters because it tells the editorial team what kind of story they’re evaluating — a seasonal content drop reads very differently to them than a first-time launch. If your update also has an in-app event attached to it, attach that event to the nomination rather than describing it again from scratch; the nomination form has a dedicated field for it.
How much notice does Apple actually want?
Apple’s own guidance gives two numbers, not one: a minimum of two weeks’ notice for any nomination to be considered at all, and up to three months ahead if you want a real shot at wider placements like the Today tab. Submitting the week you ship is close to pointless — by the time an editor could act on it, the moment has usually passed.
Build the nomination into your release planning the same way you’d plan a launch-day metadata checklist: decide what you’re nominating and when at least two weeks before you need a decision, not after.
Featuring vs. search ranking — these are different systems
A featuring nomination has no documented connection to your organic search rank. Apple’s help pages describe Featuring Nominations purely as an editorial submission — the team can showcase your app in curated collections, charts, and personalized recommendations, which is a distribution surface completely separate from the ranking factors that move your position for a search term. Getting featured can drive a genuine spike in installs and, indirectly, in the ratings and conversion signals that do feed search rank over time — but the nomination itself isn’t a ranking lever, so don’t treat submitting one as a substitute for keyword or subtitle work.
If a nomination succeeds, App Store Connect notifies your team, and Apple offers ready-made marketing assets through the app’s “Promote Your App” flow so you can share the placement on social channels with a working download link. Team members holding Admin, App Manager, or Marketing may also be contacted directly for promotional assets — worth knowing before you assume nobody on your team will hear about it if it happens.
Worth submitting even without a big launch
The bar for a nomination isn’t “we’re the next breakout hit” — it’s a real, dated thing happening in your app that an editor could tell a story around: a meaningful content update, a redesigned onboarding flow, a seasonal event. Most indie teams never submit one because they don’t know the form exists, not because their update wasn’t worth mentioning. Two weeks of lead time and a clear description is the entire cost of finding out.