How long are top App Store app names? Characters, bytes, separators

Apple limits an app name to 30 characters. In storefronts using Latin script, 66% of top-10 names were 25 to 30 characters long and the mean was 24.5 characters. In that group 21.9% of names were 30 characters or longer, so a fifth of names use the full limit or more. The study shows the name as the API returns it (trackName); it does not check how that string relates to the name field in App Store Connect.

Most names therefore leave only a few characters unused. The practical reading is that top apps tend to use the available space, not that using it makes them rank.

JP, KR, TW and HK are the exception. The mean top-10 name was 20.2 characters there but 35.8 UTF-8 bytes, because each CJK character takes 3 bytes. The table shows the clearest cases, sorted by bytes.

Bytes matter for any field that Apple counts in bytes, such as the keyword field, which App Store Connect limits to 100 bytes. A Japanese or Korean name uses far fewer characters than a Latin one but more bytes. The glossary entries on CJK characters and the byte limit explain how that applies to Apple's limits; this dataset measures names only.

57% of top-10 names across the whole sample used a separator. By category the share was highest for News (68%), Productivity (67%) and Music (63%), and lowest for Medical (35%), Reference (27%) and Utilities (27%). By storefront, South Korea (67%) was highest and Japan (47%) lowest among those listed above. The data does not say what the text on each side of a separator is, so it cannot show how many of these names pair a brand with a descriptor.

Mean name length by category ran from 19.9 characters (Social Networking) to 27.3 (Kids), though the Kids result mixes genres and the category mapping is approximate.

Top names typically use most of the 30 characters and often split brand and descriptor with a separator. That is an observation of what ranks, not a test of what causes rank. Whether your descriptor belongs in the name or the subtitle is a separate decision; this study cannot see subtitles or keyword fields. For judging how to use the space, see the guide to app name keyword strategy. Volume and difficulty in other pages of this series are LocalASO estimates from rating counts.

Combined S1 and S2 data, one snapshot on 2026-11-01. CJK byte counts assume 3 bytes per character. Category rows are approximate because of the phrase-to-category mapping. See the methodology page.

LocalASO checks keywords in 52 storefronts, each in the storefront's local language, so you can see who ranks before you decide what goes in a name. It is a Mac app at a one-time $29 and needs a license key to run. See pricing.