App Store Categories Explained: Which to Choose and Why

Every app on the App Store sits in one primary category, and that single choice decides which Top Charts you compete in, which browse pages you can appear on and how Apple filters you in search. Pick well and you can lead a category chart with a few thousand daily downloads; pick badly and you disappear behind the giants.

The full list of App Store categories

Apple currently defines 27 app categories, plus Stickers for standalone iMessage sticker packs ¹. Kids is a special case: it is a category on iPhone and iPad only, and you enter it by marking the app "Made for Kids" rather than selecting it like the others ¹.

Apple.s definitions page gives examples for each and is what App Review checks against ¹.

Games subcategories

Games is the only app category with a required second layer. In App Store Connect you can attach one or two subcategories to a game, and those subcategories drive the dedicated Games tab charts ². The live chart pages on the App Store currently break Games into these groups ⁵:

The Games charts also show a Kids filter, but that comes from the Made for Kids flag rather than from a subcategory ⁵. Stickers apps get subcategories too, following the same one-or-two rule ².

Primary versus secondary

App Store Connect lets you set a primary and a secondary category, and the two are far from equal. Apple states plainly that the primary category is what matters for discoverability: it decides where the app shows when users browse or filter search results, and whether it lives on the Apps tab or the Games tab ¹. The secondary category is a hint for browse and search, not a second chart entry.

Apple's advice for choosing a primary is practical rather than strategic: think about the app's main purpose, where users would naturally look for apps like yours, and how comparable apps are categorised ¹. The choice must reflect the core experience, because a mismatched category breaks guideline 2.3 and Apple reserves the right to move you: "If you're way off base, we may change the category for you" ³.

Two further rules catch people out. First, once a Made for Kids app is approved, the selection cannot be reversed and every later update must keep meeting the Kids guidelines, even if you deselect the category ^2,3. Second, phrases such as "for kids" or "for children" in your name, subtitle or screenshots are reserved for the Kids category, and non-Kids apps cannot imply a child audience anywhere in metadata ³.

What Kids and Magazines & Newspapers demand

Kids is the only category with its own review track. You pick an age band (5 and under, 6-8 or 9-11), ship a parental gate in front of purchases and external links, avoid third-party advertising and analytics, and have any ads human-reviewed for age appropriateness ^3,4. In return the app appears in the Kids section, and can still hold a normal primary and secondary category such as Games or Education ¹.

Magazines & Newspapers is narrower than its name suggests. Apple intends it for apps that sell auto-renewing subscriptions to issue-based periodical content, so a general news reader belongs in News instead ¹.

How this shows up in the charts

Category choice is the single biggest lever on where you can rank, because the App Store publishes Top Free, Top Paid and Top Grossing lists per category as well as overall. Each category chart ranks only the apps whose primary category matches it, so the competition you face is defined by your choice, not by your genre in any broader sense ¹.

The clearest public example is X. The app that began as Twitter is listed today under News, not Social Networking, and its listing shows it at number 1 in that category ⁶. Twitter made that switch in April 2016, reportedly jumping from outside the top 20 of Social Networking to the top of News within hours (date and chart movement unverified; the current News placement is confirmed) ⁶. The lesson is that a category where your download volume puts you near the top yields a visible chart badge, a spot on category browse pages and an "in [category]" ranking that marketing can quote, while the same volume in a crowded category earns nothing visible.

Games subcategories work the same way one level down. A word game competing in Word faces a far shallower pool than the same game filed only under Puzzle, and because you can hold two subcategories, you can appear in both charts at once ^2,5.

Category also shapes search. When a user filters results or browses a category page, only apps whose primary category matches appear, so an app in Utilities will never surface in a Productivity browse session no matter how well its keywords match ¹. The secondary category earns some of that browse exposure but none of the chart positions.

You can watch all of this live. AppWinners tracks the Top Free, Top Paid and Top Grossing lists for every iOS category and game subcategory, so before you commit to a category you can see exactly who you would be competing with and how stable the top of that chart is: /charts/ios.

A short decision checklist

1. Read Apple's definitions and shortlist the two or three categories that honestly describe your core experience ¹.
2. Open each shortlisted category chart and estimate the download rate of the apps at positions 10, 25 and 50.
3. Choose the honest category where your realistic volume lands highest, and make it primary.
4. Use the secondary category for the next-best browse audience, not for a chart you cannot reach.
5. For games, pick two subcategories: one broad for discovery, one narrow for a chart you can win ².
6. Only consider Kids if you can live with its permanent obligations ^2,3.