The first three lines of your App Store description
Nobody reads your full description. They read the first couple of lines, and then either they tap more or they leave. That top slice is the only part you can count on being seen, which makes it the highest-impact text on your whole listing. Most descriptions waste it on a company name and a hello.
This is a template for the part that shows before the fold, plus the one difference between the App Store and Google Play that decides how you should write it.
4,000 characters, and almost nobody scrolls
The full description field is capped at 4,000 characters on both the App Store and Google Play. That sounds like a lot of room, and it is — but it's a trap if you treat it as an essay. On both store product pages the description is collapsed by default. Only the opening lines are visible; the rest sits behind a …more (App Store) or Read more (Google Play) tap.
Exactly how much shows before the fold varies by device, font size, and where line breaks land — but in practice it's the first two or three lines, somewhere in the first couple hundred characters. Treat that opening as the real ad copy and the remaining 3,800-odd characters as the appendix most people never open. (On iOS there's also a separate promotional text field, up to 170 characters, that sits above the description and can be updated without a new build — same rule applies: make it a hook, not a preamble.)
The one asymmetry that changes how you write it
Here's the part most templates skip. The App Store and Google Play read your description completely differently:
- Google Play indexes the full description. The words in it are a direct search ranking signal. Keywords you use — especially early, and repeated naturally a few times — help decide which searches surface your app.
- Apple does not index the description at all. Its search algorithm reads the app name, subtitle, and the 100-character keyword field, not the description. On iOS the description exists for one reason only: to convince a human who's already looking at your page to install.
So the same block of text has two jobs depending on the store. On Google Play the first line works for a crawler and a shopper at once. On the App Store the first line only has to work for the shopper — which is freeing, because you can drop the keyword-stuffing instinct and just write the most convincing sentence you can.
Lead with the benefit, not the intro
The most common before-the-fold mistake is opening with who you are instead of what the reader gets. "Welcome to Acme. Founded in 2019, we build tools for…" burns the only lines anyone reads on throat-clearing.
Flip it. The first line should name the single outcome your app delivers, in the reader's words. The second line backs it up with proof or specifics. The third tells them concretely what the app does. Everything below the fold — feature lists, awards, changelog — can wait, because the decision is usually made before the tap.
The before-the-fold template
Fill these three lines first, then write the rest of the 4,000 characters afterward. This works for both stores; the notes call out where the two differ.
Line 1 — the benefit.
[The one outcome your app gives someone, plainly.] On Google Play, put your primary keyword in this line. On the App Store, ignore keywords here and just make it land.
Line 2 — the proof.
[Why believe you — a number, a rating, a use case, a named audience.] Keep it concrete, not a slogan.
Line 3 — what it actually does.
[The core action in one sentence, so there's no mystery about what they're installing.] On Google Play, work in one more relevant keyword naturally here.
A worked example for a habit tracker:
Over 900,000 people use it to hold a streak, from workouts to reading.
Set a habit, check it off each day, and watch the streak grow.
Notice there's no "Welcome," no founding date, no feature dump. Three lines, all benefit and proof, and the reader knows exactly what they're getting before the fold ever comes up.
Below the fold, the stores split again
Once you're past the visible lines, write for the store you're on. For Google Play, the body is still working for search — repeat your main terms naturally, cover the phrases people actually type, and keep it readable (keyword-stuffing reads badly to both the algorithm and the human). For the App Store, the body isn't indexed, so spend it entirely on conversion: a tight feature list, social proof, and a reason to trust you. Two versions of the same story, tuned to who's reading.
Then localize without dropping the hook
The catch with the before-the-fold approach is that a hook only works if it survives translation. A literal, machine-translated first line often loses the punch that made the English version convert — the benefit gets buried, the proof reads awkwardly, and you're back to a wall of text in twelve markets.
This is where Mokbi fits. It drafts your description from your actual app and localizes it into 50 languages, keeping the before-the-fold structure intact per language — benefit first, proof second, action third — so the top slice still reads like ad copy in each market rather than a translation of one. You review and adjust each store's version, then take the text to App Store Connect and Play Console yourself.