How App Store Featuring Works: Today Tab and Nominations

Getting featured on the App Store is the one growth lever that costs nothing and can still outperform a paid campaign, yet most developers never make a serious pitch for it. This guide explains who decides, what the nomination form in App Store Connect asks for, and what the published numbers say featuring does to downloads and chart rank.

Who decides: Apple's editorial team

Featuring is a human process, not an algorithm. Apple runs regional editorial teams that pick titles for each storefront, and says its selections are localised and curated per region ¹. A feature in Japan is a separate editorial decision from one in the United States, which is why multi-country features are rarer than single-market ones.

The editors work with several formats, all described on Apple's featuring page ¹:

Apple states that any app, new or established, is eligible for App of the Day and Game of the Day ¹. A strong update or a seasonal moment can be enough; launches have no monopoly.

What editors look for

Apple publishes no scorecard and says there is no checklist of requirements ¹. What it does publish is a set of themes the team weighs ¹:

• A cohesive, efficient experience that is easy to use and genuinely helpful.
• UI that is appealing and usable, including thoughtful gestures and controls.
• Innovation, meaning new platform technologies applied to a real problem.
• Uniqueness, either a fresh take on a crowded category or a new genre.
• Accessibility features that are well integrated rather than bolted on.
• Localisation with culturally appropriate content, not just translated strings.
• A product page with compelling screenshots, previews, a clear description, and positive ratings and reviews.

Games get an extra list: gameplay design, art and animation, controls, story, replayability, sound and music, technical performance and overall value ¹. Sound design is the item teams most often forget to mention in a pitch.

The nomination form in App Store Connect

Apple previewed Featuring Nominations at WWDC in June 2024 and switched it on in App Store Connect in November 2024 ⁴. Nominations are structured records with drafts, submission status and CSV bulk import for larger publishers ².

You need the Account Holder, Admin, App Manager or Marketing role ². The form has four required steps plus an optional details block ²:

Three rules are worth memorising. Once submitted, the type and related apps are locked ². CSV imports submit immediately and cannot be saved as drafts ². And if your app is under consideration, Apple may email Admin, App Manager and Marketing users asking for promotional artwork; missing that email can cost you the slot ¹.

Timing

Apple's lead-time guidance differs across its own pages. The public featuring page asks for at least two weeks and recommends up to three months ahead for wider consideration ¹; the App Store Connect help article says a minimum of three weeks ². Treat three weeks as the floor and two to three months as the target for anything you want considered across multiple storefronts.

Day of the week matters too. Apptopia's October 2017 analysis found App of the Day lifts of 2,172% on weekdays versus 580% on weekends, with a similar gap for games ⁶. Today tab stories usually run for a single day on modern iOS, so the spike is sharp and what follows depends on how well your product page converts ⁷.

In-App Events as a second door

In-App Events are the one featuring surface where developers control the content. An event carries one of seven badges (Challenge, Competition, Live Event, Major Update, New Season, Premiere, Special Event), can run up to 31 days, and can be promoted up to 14 days before it starts ³. You may have 10 events published at once and 15 approved in App Store Connect ³.

Events appear on your product page and in search by default, and editors can lift them onto the Today, Games and Apps tabs ³. Apple recommends attaching an event to a nomination as early as possible ², and lists what it considers poor candidates: daily rewards, price promotions without new content, and generic awareness campaigns ³. App Analytics breaks out downloads, impressions and opt-ins per event, making this the only featuring channel with built-in attribution ³.

What featuring measurably does

The most cited figures date from the Today tab's first year, so treat them as an upper bound rather than a 2026 forecast.

Two patterns hold across all of these. Relevance drives the multiplier: Headspace saw 2x to 3.5x from stories about relaxation and a fraction of that from a cycling story it happened to be in ⁷. And position within a collection matters: second place in a list was worth about +180% to +220% of browse units and fifth place around +8% in Phiture's data ⁷.

How this shows up in the charts

Because App Store category and overall charts are driven largely by download velocity, a Today tab feature is one of the fastest ways to jump tiers. Apptopia found that apps already ranked overall moved an average of 137 places after App of the Day, games 321 places, and 19 of 30 featured apps went from unranked to ranked, some by more than 1,000 positions ⁶. SignEasy entered the top 10 of Business in almost every featured country and reached number one in some ⁸; Medisafe hit number one in Medical in nine countries ⁹.

The ceiling is lower for apps that are already big: Apptopia measured only a 44% lift for apps already in their category's top 20 and 37% for games ⁶, which is why the most dramatic chart jumps on AppWinners tend to belong to mid-tail titles rather than household names. The effect also decays within days. SignEasy's daily downloads fell steadily through the feature week while staying far above baseline ⁸, so a feature typically buys a visible spike on the daily chart, not a new resting rank. What lasts is the secondary lift from reviews, keyword rankings and the Editors' Choice badge, which is how a strong product page turns a one-day story into a durable position.