App Store Marketing Guidelines, Explained in Plain Words

Apple keeps its marketing rules for developers on one page, the Marketing Resources and Identity Guidelines. It has five parts: App Store badges, Apple product images, custom photography and video, messaging and writing style, and legal requirements. The rules for ratings and reviews sit on a second page, Apple's ratings and reviews guidance.

The rules come with a license. To download the badge artwork you accept the App Store Marketing Artwork License Agreement printed at the bottom of the guidelines page. It lets you use the badge, the App Store icon and Apple's product images only for apps that are available on the App Store, and only while you are a member of the Apple Developer Program. Apple may ask you for samples of how you used the artwork, and the license ends automatically if you break its terms.

Read this page as a summary for people who make posts, ads, emails and landing pages for an app. It is not legal advice, and Apple's own pages are the authority. Apple can amend them at any time, so open the linked page before you send anything to print or put money behind an ad. Every statement below was checked against Apple's pages on October 11, 2026.

There are two official places to download the badge, and both are free. The fast one is App Store Marketing Tools. Search for your app, choose the storefront, and scroll to Badges and Lockups. You pick black or white, pick one of the listed languages, then either copy an embed snippet that links the badge to your product page or press Download Badges to get a zip file for that language.

On the day we checked, the badge that the tool displays is served from Apple's server as an SVG, so it stays sharp at any size on a website. Apple's footer on the tool says embeds are provided as a convenience and that Apple may deactivate a widget at its own discretion. For anything permanent, such as a printed flyer or a static image, download the file and place it yourself. To put a QR code next to the badge, the App Store QR code generator makes one as a PNG or an SVG for print.

The second place is the Download (All Versions) block on the guidelines page. It holds the full artwork packages for every language, each between 317 and 336 MB when we looked, and you have to tick the license agreement before the download starts.

Searches for "app store badge png" and "app store badge svg" mostly lead to logo collection sites. Skip them. Apple's rule is to use only the artwork it provides, and a file from a third party site gives you no way to know whether it is the current drawing or somebody's trace of it.

The quickest route is the embed code from App Store Marketing Tools. Find your app, pick the color and language under Badges and Lockups, and press Copy Embed. When we copied it on October 17, 2026, the snippet was a plain link to your product page on apps.apple.com wrapped around one image: the badge, served as an SVG from Apple's toolbox server, with the alt text Download on the App Store and a display size of 246 by 82 pixels. Paste it where the button belongs, in the HTML block of a page builder or in your own template.

Keep three parts of the snippet as they are. The link ends with two short parameters that Apple adds to the address, so leave them in. The alt text is what a screen reader announces, so if you swap in a downloaded file, give it the same words. And the size can shrink, as long as the badge stays at least 40 px tall with clear space of a quarter of its height, the minimums in the table above.

If you would rather host the file, press Download Badges in the same tool and link the image to your product page yourself. Searches for an "app store badge generator" also lead to third party sites that draw a badge for you. Apple's rule to use only the artwork it provides covers those too, so skip them.

For visitors on an iPhone, Apple offers a second, native option. A Smart App Banner is one meta tag in the head of the page that carries your app ID. Safari then shows a slim banner at the top of the page that leads to your App Store listing, or opens the app if it is already installed, and Apple's documentation says the banner does not appear on devices that cannot run your app. The same page says the app ID is listed as Apple ID under App Information in App Store Connect. Use both: the banner serves iPhone visitors in Safari, and the badge serves everyone else and every printed page.

Not on its own. Apple's trademark guidelines say only Apple and its authorized resellers and licensees may use the Apple logo in advertising, promotional and sales materials, and that nobody may use it on websites, products, packaging or ads without an express written trademark license from Apple. The marketing guidelines say the same to developers in two lines: never use the Apple logo in place of the word Apple, and do not use the standalone logo.

The logo can appear on your page only inside artwork that Apple supplies. The App Store badge carries it, which is why placing the badge is allowed. The marketing guidelines also offer artwork for Apple In App Purchase, in several languages and in black and white, to be used as supplied and never localized by you. For sign in screens, Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for Sign in with Apple provide logo files in PNG, SVG and PDF for building a custom button, with a firm rule attached: use the file to position the Apple logo inside a button, and never use the Apple logo as a button.

Words are treated differently. The trademark page lets a developer use an Apple word mark in a referential phrase that shows compatibility, such as for iPhone or compatible with Apple Watch, when the Apple name is less prominent than your product name, the product really works with it, and nothing suggests Apple endorses or sponsors you. The same page rules out imitating Apple's packaging, website design or typefaces, borrowing an Apple slogan, and registering a domain built on an Apple trademark.

People who search for Apple trademark guidelines are usually after one of those three answers. Cases outside them, such as merchandise, books or a conference name, have their own sections on the trademark page, and Apple asks that other questions go to its Trademark Department.

The whole rule is two sentences on Apple's ratings and reviews page. Your rating may appear in marketing as long as it accurately reflects your app's current rating. Customer reviews may be used in marketing materials "only if permission from the reviewer is granted."

Current is the word that catches people. The same Apple page explains that the summary rating is specific to each territory, and that you can reset it when you release a new version. So a 4.8 in the United States can be a 4.5 in Germany on the same day, and a rating image made in March can be wrong by June. State the storefront and the date next to the number ("4.8 on the App Store, United States, October 2026"), and remake the image when the number moves.

Apple does not hand you a reviewer's contact details, so getting permission takes some work. One route is to reply to the review in App Store Connect, which notifies the reviewer, and invite the person to write to your support address. The other is to ask for quotes from users you can already reach by email. Keep the written yes. Our guide on how to get App Store reviews covers asking for reviews inside the app, which Apple limits to three prompts in a 365 day period.

In the United States a quoted review is also an advertising claim. FTC staff guidance on the consumer reviews rule, in effect since October 21, 2024, says a consumer review featured in advertising becomes a testimonial, and the business that publishes it can be liable if it is fake or false. Quote reviews word for word and never write one yourself.

We found no official App Store rating badge on any of the Apple pages above. Apple's marketing tool offers image types for a new launch, an update, a subscription offer and a new offer, and a rating is not one of the options. A rating graphic is something you design yourself with a testimonial graphic generator or a design tool. Build it from your own brand pieces, and do not rework the App Store badge into a rating plaque.

Apple gives you official material when it features you. According to Apple's page on getting featured, if your app lands in select Today tab placements such as App of the Day, the App Store Connect app sends a notification and lets you pick visual assets to share on social media. Use those assets. They are the one way to say it with Apple's own design.

Apple's pages do not publish a wording rule for claims like "Featured by Apple", so two general rules apply. The first is accuracy: Apple says featured selections are curated by region, and Editors' Choice is curated per storefront, so name where and when ("App of the Day in Canada, June 2026"). The second is Apple's trademark guidance, which bars using Apple's names, logos or product images in a way that implies Apple endorses or sponsors your product.

In practice: say what happened, where and when. Do not write "Apple recommends" or "Apple's favorite", do not draw your own laurel with the Apple logo, and take the claim down from evergreen pages when it gets old.

A social post about one feature can link to a page that shows that feature first. Apple's tool for this is the custom product page. Per Apple's custom product pages overview, you can publish up to 70 additional versions of your product page for iPhone and iPad, each with its own screenshots, promotional text and app previews, and each with its own URL to share in posts, emails and ads. Apple's help page on configuring custom product pages adds that you can assign keywords from your latest approved version to a page, so people who search those words land on it in place of your default page once it is approved and visible.

To learn which post or channel brought the downloads, add a campaign link. Apple's campaign links help page puts the generator in App Store Connect under Analytics, Acquisition, Campaigns. You type a campaign name of up to 30 characters, and Apple returns a link carrying a campaign token and a provider token. The provider token identifies your developer account and stays the same across campaigns.

Two limits to plan around. The Campaigns option appears only after your app has analytics data, so a brand new app cannot generate links before it has downloads. And a metric shows up in the dashboard only once it reaches a minimum of 5 in the date range, with campaigns appearing no sooner than 24 hours after they start. A link in one small post may never show a number. Group posts under one campaign per channel or per launch, a habit worth adding to your app launch checklist.

People search for an Apple brand guidelines PDF in many forms. For app developers there is no single brand book to download. What Apple publishes is a set of web pages and artwork packages: the Marketing Resources and Identity Guidelines as a web page, badge artwork as zip packages for every language (each between 317 and 336 MB when we checked on October 17, 2026), device bezels on Apple Design Resources, and the trademark rules on Apple's legal site. We found no public PDF of Apple's own corporate brand standards on any of those pages, and the trademark page forbids imitating Apple's typefaces and design in any case.

If a designer or agency needs a document, save Apple's guidelines page as a PDF from your browser on the day the work starts and write the date on it. The license at the bottom of that page says the guidelines may be amended from time to time, so open the live page again before anything goes to print or into a paid campaign.

Two narrower sets of rules behave like brand guides of their own. The marketing guidelines link to Apple's Apple Pay and Apple Wallet guidelines for apps that take payments with Apple Pay, and to the brand assets for Apple In App Purchase. For your own colors, type and logo, keep a one page brand style guide next to Apple's rules.

Spreadcast is app marketing automation for social media. You paste your App Store link once, it checks the public listing every day, and it turns each update, new 5 star review and rating milestone into a designed post for your networks.

Two of Apple's rules are built into how it works. A post that shows your rating uses the rating on the listing that day, so the number is the current one. A post that quotes a reviewer's words never publishes by itself: it waits for your approval, because the permission Apple requires is yours to get.

The rest of this page still applies to anything you make by hand. For wording ideas that stay inside the rules, see our app update announcement examples and app launch announcement examples, and keep your own colors and type in a one page brand style guide.