The App Store and Mac App Store showcase your amazing apps and help customers find new favorites. They’re also where our editors share stories about inspiring developers and their incredible work. Find out how customers can discover your apps, and learn how our editors select apps and developers to feature.
This app is pretty delightful. While the cost of decor items can be a real annoyance, & the currency system is a mess, the designing is good fun. The challenges are robust & diverse. The app doesn’t have accessibility options, apart from being able to change your name at any time (thanks for that, it’s awesome). Reported by 9to5Mac, some major developers are deciding to opt-out of offering their apps on the Mac App Store ahead of tomorrow's Apple Event, where the company is expected to announce its own Apple Silicon chips that will be able to run iPhone and iPad apps on the Mac.
Categories
Categories on the App Store and Mac App Store sort apps based on their main function or subject matter. Customers can browse categories, such as Entertainment, Shopping, or Social Networking, to find related apps. You can assign a primary and a secondary category to your app. The primary category is particularly important for discoverability, as it helps users find your app when browsing or filtering search results, and it determines in which tab your app appears on the App Store.
To learn more, see Choosing a Category.
Today Tab
The Today tab on the App Store is a daily destination with original stories from our editors around the world, featuring exclusive premieres, new releases, a fresh look at our all-time favorites, an App of the Day, a Game of the Day, and more. It offers tips and how-to guides to help customers use apps in innovative ways, and showcases interviews with inspiring developers. Stories share Apple’s unique perspective on apps and games and how they impact our lives, using artwork, videos, and developer quotes to bring your apps to life.
Games and Apps Tabs
The App Store is also the world’s best game store, with dedicated experiences for games and apps that inform and engage customers through recommendations on new releases and updates, videos, top charts, and handpicked collections and categories. Both tabs also feature app preview videos that autoplay with muted audio as customers scroll through the tabs, and selected in-app purchases — which customers can start buying directly on the App Store.
Promoted In-App Purchases
Customers can browse in-app purchases directly on the App Store and start a purchase even before downloading your app, helping your app’s content gain exposure. You can promote up to 20 in-app purchases, including subscriptions, on your app’s product page. They can also appear in search results and may be featured by our editorial team.
For details, see Promoting Your In-App Purchases.
Discover
Discover is where customers find the best new releases and updates on the Mac App Store. Each week, our editors shine a light on incredible apps and games with in-depth stories, behind-the-scenes interviews, and curated collections to help customers do more of what they love with their Mac.
Create
Create is where customers find powerful apps that make creating on a Mac intuitive, efficient, and fun, with helpful tips and tours that even experts will find useful.
Mac App Store Online
Work
Work is where we showcase new favorites that support focus and organization. With curated collections and how-tos from our editors, finding the right business, productivity, and utility apps is easy.
Play
Play is where we highlight great games and entertainment apps, with recommendations of new releases, all-time favorites, and handpicked collections.
Develop
Develop is where our editors curate the best developer tools and utilities to help bring your creativity and imagination to customers around the world.
Getting Featured
Mac App Store Redesign Website
App Store editors write stories that showcase apps in interesting and informative ways. Our editors base their decisions on a variety of factors, all of which amount to a great product that customers will love. There is no paid placement or checklist of requirements for apps we write about or feature.
Stories.App Store editors talk about apps that have a unique story for example, a behind-the-scenes look at how a developer launched an app that disrupted an industry or how an app helped a customer solve a unique problem.
Apps and Games. When considering apps to feature, our editors look for high-quality apps across all categories, with a particular focus on new apps and apps with significant updates. Factors that our editors consider include:
- UI design: the usability, appeal, and overall quality of the app
- User experience: the efficiency and functionality of the app
- Innovation: apps that solve a unique problem for customers
- Localizations: high-quality and relevant
- Accessibility: well-integrated features
- App Store product page: compelling screenshots, app previews, and descriptions
- Uniqueness
For games, editors also consider:
- Gameplay and level of engagement
- Graphics and performance
- Audio
- Narrative and story depth
- Ability to replay
- Gameplay controls
Tell us your story.
If your app has a unique story that our editorial team should know, tell us about it. For new apps or a significant update, let us know six to eight weeks in advance of your launch.
Last year when Apple launched iOS 11, one of the major revamps that they did was to the iOS App Store, giving it a new layout and design which was said to help improve on app discovery. However the Mac App Store did not get such treatment, and admittedly given how long it’s been that way, we reckon it’s about time that it did.The good news for Mac users is that it looks like a change is coming, according to a post by John Gruber of Daring Fireball (via 9to5Mac). Gruber’s post was commenting on another article about some of the subtle but meaningful changes Apple made to the iOS App Store, and he remarked that these are the changes he’s looking forward to with the Mac App Store as well.
“The new iOS 11 App Store really is run like an editorial-driven publication. They write articles and features, and as Vinh rightly celebrates here, commission great custom artwork. One of the things I’m most looking forward to next month at WWDC is seeing this sort of treatment on the Mac App Store, too.”
As 9to5Mac points out, Gruber has been known to drop casual comments like that which hints at Apple’s future plans. At the same time it isn’t necessarily a very far-fetched rumor either because like we said, the changes to the iOS App Store has resulted in an increased number of downloads, something we’re sure that Apple would like to apply to macOS as well.
Filed in . Read more about Apps and Macos.