Key points:
- Apple announced App Store Tags at WWDC 2025. Its own AI generates them from your metadata. A human reviews each one before it goes live.
- Tags sit next to categories on the App Store’s search page. The goal: surface a real feature that a keyword field misses.
- As of September 2026, this is still developer-beta only. It does not affect App Store search on the public store yet.
- You can review and remove a wrong tag in App Store Connect. Apple says you don’t need new keywords to shape which tags get picked.
Apple wants App Store search to describe what an app actually does. Not just what its keyword field says. That’s the idea behind App Store Tags. A label, generated by Apple’s own AI, sitting next to your app’s category. Meant to catch a real feature a plain keyword list misses. It’s a genuinely new discovery idea. It’s also not live yet. Treating it as if it already changes your rank would be a mistake.
What Apple actually announced
TechCrunch’s WWDC 2025 coverage lays out the mechanism in plain terms. Apple’s own AI reads an app’s existing metadata. Its description. Its screenshots. Anything already on record. From that, it writes tags describing specific things the app can do. A human checks each tag before it publishes. Once live, tags show up next to categories in search, and in search results themselves. That gives a user a feature-based way to find an app. Not just a category browse. Not just an exact keyword match.
| What’s confirmed | Source |
|---|---|
| Tags come from Apple’s own AI, then a human review | TechCrunch, June 2025 |
| Tags show next to categories in search | TechCrunch, June 2025 |
| Developers can review or remove a tag in App Store Connect | TechCrunch, June 2025 |
| Live in the iOS 26 developer beta as of mid-2026 | Multiple outlets, through Sept 2026 |
| Live on the public App Store, or feeding public search | Not confirmed as of this writing |
What’s still unconfirmed
This is the part worth real care. Coverage through September 2026 keeps saying the same thing: App Store Tags sit in the iOS 26 developer beta. Not on the public store. Not yet feeding the actual search results most users see. That’s a very different claim from “Apple now ranks apps by AI tags.” It doesn’t. Not on the public store. Not yet. Any claim that tags already move real search results should be treated as unverified, until Apple’s own release notes say so directly.
Real-world scenario: A fitness app developer read a summary post claiming AI tags were “already changing App Store rankings.” They spent a week rewriting the app’s description around a guess at what the tags might reward. Then they checked Apple’s own beta release notes directly. The feature was still developer-beta only. No stated effect on public search. The rewrite wasn’t wasted, clearer copy rarely is, but the ranking assumption behind it had no real basis yet.
What to actually do with this now
- Don’t chase a tag system that isn’t public yet. There’s no confirmed public mechanism to optimize for. Guessing at one risks describing your app wrong, for a feature that may still change shape.
- Keep your real metadata accurate anyway. Tags come from your real description, screenshots, and content. A clear, honest listing is the actual prep work here, not a workaround.
- Check Apple’s own developer docs before acting on any “AI tags now affect ranking” claim. This is a fast-moving beta. A summary from a few months back may already be stale.
AppRankr’s Rank Tracker keeps a daily record of your actual App Store positions. So if and when tags do reach the public store, you’ll have real before-and-after data. Not a guess.