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Apple featuring nomination: where the form is, what it asks, what to write

By Emin, indie iOS developer building FunnelHound · Published 3 Nov 2026

The form lives at App Store Connect → Apps → your app → Featuring → Nominations, behind a plus button. It asks for a name, one of three types, a description for the editorial team, a publish date, and a handful of optional details. Apple wants it at least three weeks before the date, and the date may be a guess you fix later. Eleven fields, maybe forty minutes, and most developers never open it.

The click path

1. App Store Connect → Apps → select the app.
2. Left sidebar → Featuring → Nominations.
3. Click the + beside the Nominations heading → Create Nomination. On a first visit there is a Get Started screen with the same button and a bulk option.
4. Fill the first four fields in sequence (name, type, description, date), save, and the draft opens with the optional section.
5. Submit Nomination, top right, and confirm.

Only the Account Holder, Admin, App Manager and Marketing roles see the Featuring section. A Developer-role account looks for it and finds nothing, which is a role problem rather than a region or program problem. The Nominations dashboard then lists every draft and submission with its status, and it is the only place a status ever appears.

The three types

• App Launch. A new app or a pre-order. One shot, so the date matters most here.
• App Enhancements. A meaningful update: new feature, redesign, adoption of a new platform capability. The type most working apps should be using several times a year.
• New Content. Seasonal content, an offer, a campaign, an in-app event. Can carry an approved in-app event alongside it.

The fields, and what editors read into each

Field	What it asks	What to put
Name	A memorable label for this nomination	App name plus the hook, one line. It doubles as the headline an editor skims.
Type	App Launch, App Enhancements or New Content	Match the moment honestly. A bug-fix release is not an enhancement.
Description	Details of the update or launch and what it aims to do	The pitch. Structure below.
Publish date	A day or a range, in your device's timezone	Your best estimate. Editable later, so firm beats vague and early beats late.
Related apps	Up to 10 other apps on the account affected by this	Only if the change spans them. Otherwise leave empty.
Platforms	Prefilled from the app	Untick platforms the update does not touch.
Countries or regions	Prefilled from availability	Narrow it if the content is local. Editorial is regional.
Localizations	Prefilled from the app's languages	Leave as is unless the update is not localized.
In-App Event	Attach an approved or published event	For New Content nominations with an event already in review or live.
Supplemental materials	Up to 5 URLs	A TestFlight public link, a 30-second video, a press page. Things that let an editor see it without installing.
Helpful details	Accessibility, inclusivity, priority, anything else	VoiceOver support, Dynamic Type, localization work, who it serves. Editorial has themes, and these feed them.

Writing the description

Editors read hundreds of these. A structure that survives skimming:

1. One sentence on what the app does, as a user would say it. Not the tagline.
2. What is new, two or three concrete items. "Live Activities for order tracking" beats "a better experience".
3. Why now: the date, the season, the platform release it rides on, the event it supports.
4. Who it is for and what changes for them. One sentence.
5. Platform technology adopted by name: widgets, App Intents, visionOS, StoreKit features, accessibility APIs. Editorial curates around Apple's own themes, and naming the technology is how you get into that pile.

Keep it under 250 words, no superlatives, no "revolutionary". Everything else about how editorial thinks, and what a feature actually does to downloads and deletions, is in the getting featured guide.

Timing

• Three weeks minimum before the publish date, per Apple, and more is better. Editorial plans by theme and calendar, not by inbox order.
• The date can move. Open the nomination and edit it when the release slips. A stale date is worse than a tentative one.
• Re-nominate per moment. Each real update or launch is a new nomination. The dashboard holds the history; nothing stops you from having several in flight.

Bulk nominations by CSV

The Get Started screen offers a spreadsheet upload for studios with many apps or many regional campaigns: up to 50 nominations per file, using Apple's template from the Help pages. One difference matters: CSV nominations are submitted on upload, with no draft stage, so the file has to be right before it goes in. Single nominations save as drafts first.

After you submit

Expect silence. Apple does not reply to nominations, and a feature can appear on a platform or region you did not expect. The signal that something happened is in your numbers: App Analytics → Sources shows impressions from App Store Browse jumping on the feature day, with a tap-through rate far below search traffic, and installs from people who never meant to look for you. Watch deletions in the week after; featured installs churn harder than searched installs, and the mix shift can make an otherwise healthy app look worse for a fortnight.

FunnelHound marks the nomination date and the feature day as milestones on the funnel, so the Browse spike, the lower conversion and the deletion bump all read as one event instead of three mysteries.

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Data notes: click path, field list, roles, three-week lead time and the 50-row CSV limit follow Apple's App Store Connect Help ("Nominate your app for featuring" and the nominations template reference) and the WWDC24 App Store Connect session, as of 2026. The form in the first figure is a mock-up; Apple's layout differs in detail and changes without notice.