Your store listing is editable after launch, but only one text field on either store moves without a submission.
Apple splits your listing into properties you can edit at any time and properties that wait until the app version is editable. Price, availability, your review notes and a 170 character promotional text field are in the first group. The name, the subtitle, the description, the keywords and the support link are in the second. Google Play works differently again: almost every listing edit is reviewed, and nothing is even sent for review until you click a button. Every field name and limit below comes from App Store Connect Help and Play Console Help, read on 16 October 2026. If you have not got the app out yet, start with publishing to the App Store.
What follows is the editable list on each store, the fields that drag a release behind them, and the two lags that explain why your change is not showing yet. One of them is 24 hours. The other can be a week.
Start hereThe short version
Money moves freely, words move with a version and images now sit in between.
On the App Store you can change the price, the countries, the tax category and your notes to App Review whenever you like. The selling copy is different: name, subtitle, description and keywords are version properties, so rewriting your listing means creating a version. Images landed somewhere new in 2026. They live in Asset Library and can be submitted on their own once your app has an approved version, which means review without a build.
Google Play has no equivalent split. Text, graphics, category and contact details are all store listing or store settings changes, and all of them queue on the Publishing overview page. The trap is that saving is not submitting. Google states plainly that your changes are not automatically sent for review, and that an item is not reviewed until you click Send for review.
What can you change without submitting a new build?
More than most people think, and Apple writes the list down. App Store Connect Help keeps a reference called Required, localizable, and editable properties. It says the tables show the app and version properties required for App Store submission, and that they also indicate the properties that can be localized and edited at any time without submitting a new version of your app. A tick in the Editable column is the whole answer, and it is worth reading before you plan a release around a text change.
Read on 16 October 2026, the ticks sit on primary language, the license agreement, copyright, your app review information, the Digital Services Act status, the regulated medical device answers, the routing app coverage file, the server notification URL, app availability, price, pricing start and end dates, the last compatible version setting, the tax category, the privacy data types, and the accessibility URL and support answers. Apple's own maintenance overview is blunter about the commercial ones: you can change the price, schedule price changes, and change the countries or regions for your app at any time.
Two fields deserve their names learned. Promotional text is 170 characters, it appears above your description, and Apple describes it as letting you inform your App Store visitors of any current app features without requiring an updated submission. App review information is the contact name, email and phone number plus your notes for the reviewer. Apple says it is not visible to customers and can be edited at any time, and that on an approved version you click Edit at the top right of the App Review Information section.
Images moved. Screenshots, app previews and creative assets now live in Asset Library, and Apple's submission help says that after your app has an approved version you can submit standalone assets directly from the Asset Library without creating a new app version. That is faster, not free: the asset is still reviewed, and it cannot be submitted on its own if the item it is assigned to is already in an active submission. When an edit is approved, expect a wait. Apple says it may take up to 24 hours for changes to appear on the App Store or when users install your app, and the edit itself needs the Account Holder, Admin, App Manager or Marketing role.
App Store Connect Help, required, localizable, and editable properties, read 16 October 2026
Check yours
Where the edit actually happens
Tick what you want to change on a live app. The field names are the ones each store uses in its own console.
Nothing ticked. Price, availability, promotional text and your review notes are the four things you can move today on the App Store without waiting for anything.
Which fields drag a whole release behind them?
The rule is one sentence in App Store Connect Help: you can edit some properties anytime, while others only when the app status is editable. Unhelpfully, the properties with no tick are the ones people most want to change after launch, because they are the ones that sell the app.
Name and subtitle are both in that group. Apple says you can edit the name until you submit the app to App Review, and that later you can change the name when you create a new version or when the status of the app version permits editing the property. Description, 4000 characters of plain text, and keywords, 100 bytes with no other app or company names in them, travel with the version too. So do the support URL, the marketing URL, the privacy policy URL, the privacy choices URL, the age rating, the primary and secondary categories, the release settings and the What's New text. A listing rewrite is therefore a release, not an afternoon.
That makes the order of operations matter. Creating a version needs the current version to be at Ready for Distribution, you type an incremental App Store version number, and the metadata from the current version is copied across for you. The build string is a separate field that you increment in Xcode before you upload, which is where most of the confusion about version numbers begins.
One more line from Apple should change how you plan. Its help says it is not possible to revert to a previous version on the App Store if you have an issue with your app, and that you must create and submit a new version. A bad screenshot is an edit you can make this week. A bad build is another trip through review with your users holding the broken one, which is the argument for reading why apps get rejected before a release rather than during one.
App Store Connect Help, required, localizable, and editable properties, read 16 October 2026
What is the Google Play equivalent, and how long does it take?
Google calls it the main store listing. In Play Console it sits under Grow users, then Store presence, then Main store listing, and it holds the app icon, the feature graphic, the screenshots, the preview video and the descriptions. The short description has an 80 character limit and is the first text a user reads on your app page, which they can expand to see the full description. Category, tags and your support email, phone and website live one page across under Store settings. There is no promotional text field and no keyword field, so the copy on the page is the only lever you have.
The real difference from Apple is not the field list. It is that typing is not submitting. Play Console has a Publishing overview page, and updates to your store listings and changes to your store settings both appear on it. Google says every change that needs review is added to a section called Changes not yet sent for review, that items are not sent for review until you click Send for review, and that your changes are not automatically sent for review. The same applies after a rejection: if you have fixed the problem, the fix still waits for you to send it.
Once it is sent, the clock belongs to Google. Its guidance is that all app changes need to be processed before they can be published, and that processing can take a few hours or up to seven days, or longer in exceptional cases, depending on the review time your app is subject to. Google recommends a buffer of at least a week between submitting and going live, and names new developer accounts as the case that takes longer. It also warns that the turnaround is counted from the last submitted change, so submitting something new while a change is in review can push your app to the back of the queue. One batched submission beats five small ones.
Google gives you one thing Apple does not. A change sitting in review, or approved and waiting in Ready to publish, can be moved back into Changes not yet sent for review, which stops it going live, though Google notes it may still be subject to review. Turning managed publishing on holds approved changes until you publish them, which is how a listing change gets lined up with a launch date. Store listing changes, custom store listings and live store listing experiments are all held back that way. Release notes are one of the listed exceptions and go out regardless. After approval, category and tag edits carry their own note: up to 24 hours to reflect on your app page.
Play Console Help, control when app changes are reviewed and published, read 16 October 2026
So what should you edit first after launch?
Start with the edits that cost nothing. On the App Store, price, availability and the countries you sell in move at any time, with scheduled start and end dates if you want a promotion to end by itself. A pricing change is a decision, not a release. Promotional text is the only text field on either store that moves with no submission at all, which makes it the right place for anything with a date attached. Put the sale, the outage notice or the feature that shipped this morning there, and keep it out of the description where it would need a version.
Then fix what you cannot fix later. The support URL has to lead to real contact information, a legal address, an email address or a telephone number, and Apple ties it to the version, so a dead support link is stuck until your next release. Check it before you submit, not after. The privacy policy URL behaves the same way. Both are small fields that turn into a month of silence when they point somewhere wrong.
Screenshots are the highest leverage edit on both stores and the one that needs patience. On Apple's side that is an Asset Library submission with no new build. On Google's side it is a Send for review that may take a week. Do them in batches, with the copy, the graphics and the store settings in one submission, because a single round of review is the cheapest round of review you will get.
Keep a note of what each round costs you in days. That number is the one nobody has when they plan the next release, and it is the difference between a listing you maintain and a listing you froze at launch. The fixed costs sit elsewhere: if you are still working out the developer account side of it, read what it costs to publish an app alongside this, because none of that changes once you are live.
Play Console Help, control when app changes are reviewed and published, read 16 October 2026
The same listing edit, store by store
| What you are dealing with | App Store | Google Play | Same on both |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the listing lives | App Store Connect, app sidebar, plus Asset Library for images | Play Console, Grow users, Store presence, Main store listing | No |
| Text edits that need no new version | Promotional text only | None, every listing edit is reviewed | No |
| Edits sent for review automatically | Yes, a submission goes when you submit it | No, you click Send for review yourself | No |
| Price and country changes at any time | Yes | No | No |
| Pull a change back before it goes live | No | Yes | No |
| Lag after approval | Up to 24 hours to appear on the App Store | Up to 24 hours for category and tag changes | Yes |
Where this lands if a builder generated your app
The listing is yours either way. No tool can write your promotional text or press Send for review for you, because both stores hold the account holder responsible for what the page claims. On iOS there is a harder reason as well. App Store Review Guideline 4.2.6 says apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service are rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app content, which is you. The submissions, and therefore the listing edits that travel with them, stay on your side of the line.
Newly is an AI app builder. You describe an app in plain English and it writes a real React Native and Expo project that you own, with two way GitHub sync so the code is never trapped. It uploads iOS builds to TestFlight, publishes to Google Play internal testing and builds a standalone Android APK. It is $25 a month and there is no free tier. What it does not do is submit to the App Store for you, for the reason above.
The practical overlap with this page is the build loop. Most listing work does not need a build at all, and knowing which half is which saves you from shipping a release to fix a typo. The half that does need one is cheap when a new build is a prompt and an upload rather than a day of setup. Fixing a support URL means a version either way, so the question becomes how fast you can produce a version, not whether you can.
Questions people ask about editing a live listing
Parts of it, and Apple publishes the list. App Store Connect Help has a reference called Required, localizable, and editable properties, and it says the tables indicate the properties that can be localized and edited at any time without submitting a new version of your app. Read on 16 October 2026, the editable ones include price, app availability, pricing start and end dates, the tax category, copyright, primary language, the license agreement, your app review information, the privacy data types and the accessibility answers. Name, subtitle, description, keywords, support URL, marketing URL and the privacy policy URL are not on that list. They move when the app status is editable, which in practice means with your next version.
Get the version out, then edit the page around it
Decide which half of your listing needs a build before you plan the week. The free half can change today. The other half is a release, and a release is only expensive if producing one is.
Start building