Since mid-2025, Apple runs OCR on App Store screenshots and indexes the text it finds. Read that again: the captions on your screenshots are now searchable metadata, not just design. It is one of the quietest but most consequential ASO changes in years, and most listings have not reacted yet. Here is what it changes and how to write captions that both sell and rank.
What actually changed
Apple confirmed at WWDC 2025 that text extracted from screenshots feeds search, alongside AI-generated tags derived from your metadata. Concretely: a meditation app whose first screenshot says "Fall asleep in minutes" can now surface for queries it never put in its keyword field. Your five to ten captions are a new keyword surface, per language, per storefront.
The new rules of caption writing
The old rule still stands: the caption's first job is converting the human who sees it. The new layer: choose words that double as search terms.
- Lead with the benefit, phrased the way users search. "Track every subscription" beats "Your finances, reimagined", both for humans and for the index.
- One idea per slide. OCR or not, captions must survive thumbnail size. If it does not fit big and short, it is two slides.
- Cover different queries across slides. Five slides = five chances to phrase a different search intent. Do not repeat the same headline five ways.
- Do not keyword-stuff. A caption written for a robot reads like one, and conversion drops immediately. The OCR bonus only pays if the caption still sells.
The multiplier: localized captions
The index is per storefront, so a French caption is indexed for French queries. That makes screenshot localization doubly valuable: it already lifts conversion by a third, and it now adds localized keyword coverage that competitors with English-only screenshots simply do not have.
The practical workflow
Write captions as a keyword-aware copy exercise before designing anything (the full process). Keep them editable rather than baked into flattened images: in LookFrame, captions are text on top of the design, per language, so testing a new phrasing or fixing a keyword is a two-minute edit and re-export, not a design session.
One caution: keep the text honest and readable. Screenshots still have to show the app in use (Guideline 2.3.3), and unreadable text pasted for robots helps nobody.
The short version
Apple reads your screenshots now. Write captions that a human would tap and a search engine can parse: benefit-first, search-phrased, one idea per slide, translated per market. It is free keyword space; claim it before your category does.
