A pre-review checklist for App Store and Google Play listing copy

Listing copy is easy to treat as the last task before submission. That is also when an overlong translation, a leftover draft marker, or a claim that needs more context becomes expensive to revisit. A pre-review pass gives those details a place in the release workflow.

1. Check the exact field budget

App Store names and subtitles have 30-character limits. Google Play titles also use 30, while its short description allows 80. Long descriptions allow 4,000. Apple promotional text is optional and has its own 170-character budget.

Apple’s keyword field is different: the checker uses a 100-byte UTF-8 budget. Accented letters and emoji can take multiple bytes. Spaces and commas count too. Use the free character-limit checker to inspect a field before saving it, rather than trimming blindly until it looks short enough.

2. Review every saved language

A short English title can become a long German translation. A complete source listing can sit beside a locale with no saved description. Save your edits in Localizations, then open Releases and run Check saved copy across all saved languages or one selected language.

Required-text findings describe workspace completeness. They are not proof that the remote store is missing the same field: a partial local update may be valid when the store already has a required value. Use the finding as a prompt to verify the submission context.

3. Remove draft text and inspect template tokens

Look for TODO, TBD, placeholder copy, and variables left in a saved description. The check also compares applicable source placeholders with translated text, so a dropped token is visible before publishing copy as written.

A template token is not automatically wrong; it may be intentional in your workflow. Review the exact saved output and ensure it contains the text you mean to send. The important distinction is between an intentional variable and a draft that would appear literally on the store.

4. Separate structural issues from contextual flags

Over-limit fields and HTML in an App Store description are different from a phrase such as “best” that needs to be read in context. Results separate blocking copy issues from review flags rather than calling every pattern a policy violation.

• Check repeated Apple keywords and unnecessary repeated description lines.
• Review references to other platforms in Apple metadata.
• Inspect Google title formatting, including decorative symbols and long all-capital titles.
• Substantiate ranking, promotional, assurance, or endorsement language where it appears.

Supported English phrase patterns run only for English locales. Other languages still receive the applicable structural and pattern checks; the report does not pretend to verify translation meaning.

5. Follow findings back to the right field

Each finding names its language and field, explains what was detected, and provides a suggested next step with store guidance. Use its field link to return to Localizations, save the correction, and run the check again. Changes to saved copy invalidate the old result; unsaved editor text is not part of the report.

What the percentages actually mean

The passed percentage is the share of applicable automated copy checks that passed. Attention is the remaining share. Empty optional fields do not add artificial passes. A blocking issue remains important even if most other checks pass.

These figures are not approval or rejection probabilities. They do not verify product claims, rights, privacy practices, binaries, screenshots, or every submission requirement. A 100% copy-check result is not an approval guarantee.

Finish the preparation beyond copy

Review the actual screenshot sets and store-page preview, confirm reviewer information and localized release notes, and inspect the files in permission and configuration pre-review. The release checklist brings those preparation tasks together, while Apple and Google make the final review decision.

See the upload → missing locale → completed example checklist in the 60-second demo.