Apple opened WWDC with a rebuilt Siri and a redesigned everything, and the App Store got its cut: a product page header, video in search results, an asset library you can update without filing a review. Nice.
But if you walked away with “the App Store has a header now”, you missed it. The real move is quieter: Apple started routing discovery away from the listing, toward Siri, toward AI, toward intent. The storefront got a facelift, while the foundation moved.
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The placement everyone’s talking about isn’t the one that matters
The search results asset is the one I’d build first. It’s the creative that decides whether someone taps at all at the top of funnel, where around 60% of installs still come from.
And for the first time you can break the screenshot format: landscape on a portrait app, a single big image or video where you used to get a cramped triplet. You can even pull a creative already winning on Meta or TikTok and test it straight in search.
The header doesn’t have to show your app
For a decade screenshots had one rule: show the product. That’s been quietly shifting as more apps treat the first screenshot as branding, not a feature shot. But the header is now officially free of it, carrying brand and mood.
The job of your screenshots is now becoming sharper: put the features and copy up top, readable above the fold, before anyone scrolls.
Two things I’d assume before the specs land:
There’s a safe area: the system paints your app name over the header, so keep your own text and logos out of that zone.
A header video is not a preview video. The preview shows the app working; the header sets a mood, often with no UI at all. Apple finally let you use for something other than the product.
Half of this is really about Ads
The Today tab finally earns its premium. The placement that’s looked the same since 2022 is now larger, fully visible the second the store opens, CPP assets animating behind it. I’ve spent years telling clients the Today tab was an awareness placement with limited creative freedom. That’s over, and apps should now re-test it with a brand new strategy.
CPP + header is a message-match play, and the easy win to set up in month one. Your ad creative, the header on the CPP it lands on, and the page itself can finally be one continuous visual.
The Asset Library brings it together: pre-approve a batch of assets, then sync creative to a campaign’s timing. Think seasonal push, event launch, a reactive moment… different use cases to deploy new assets and align even more your paid and organic efforts.
🎯
A custom product page is the destination for whatever you run: Meta, Google, TikTok, your own site, a link in this newsletter. Now the header carries the story through, with the same creative people saw at the source.
And the part no one expected: Apple acknowledged that web traffic matters. Their walkthrough used a website selling yoga classes, linked to a CPP, the header reusing the site’s visuals, a deep link straight into the relevant in-app content. Web > store > in-app as one continuous journey.
So whether it’s paid social, search, your own site, or increasingly whatever an AI assistant decides to surface, you can finally control the first frame people hit on the store. Build a CPP and a matching header per major source.
Discovery is leaving the listing
This is the one.
App Intents is the only way an app surfaces in Siri, and the new Siri runs on a custom Google Gemini model. Apps that haven’t adopted App Intents are simply invisible to it. We’ve got a 2-to-3 year migration window, but the clock starts when iOS 27 ships this autumn.
Someone asks Siri “what’s the best app to track my workouts?” and Siri decides which one fulfils the intent. No browsing, no scrolling a results page, just a request and an answer. And it’s personalised, so two people asking the same question can get two different apps.
We’ve spent years optimising a listing for search. Part of the game is now optimising for an assistant that never shows the listing.
The question I can’t answer yet: do we get a “Siri” source in App Store Connect to measure any of it? If discovery moves to intent fulfilment and we’re flying blind on attribution, that’s a hole right where the growth is going.
And the part most takes this week will skip… in the EU and China, the new Siri isn’t available at launch because of DMA. EU developers can’t even test it in their own apps during development. So for a big slice of our market, this whole shift arrives late, with all the planning mess that implies.
The store is now recommending you to people who never searched
Siri isn’t the only thing deciding for users, the same shift is happening inside the store. Apple’s rolling out Personalized Collections: curated groupings like “Because You Play Backyard Birds > Mellow Atmospheric Games” on the Apps, Games and Search tabs, each with a line on why it’s relevant to that person, and evolve with usage and downloads.
Affinity-based discovery, Apple putting you in front of people because of what they already do, not because they typed your keyword.
It’s algorithmic and the “why” copy belongs to Apple, so there are no direct levers, but think of it like “
Native AI is coming for a few of your apps
The Camera and Photos are getting a real AI layer with generative editing, object removal, reframing a shot as if you’d moved the camera. Apple is openly pointing it at AI photo editors, and the same logic threatens calorie trackers, bill-splitters, background removers, anything whose core loop is “point your camera at a thing, get structured info back.”
I’d hold the panic, though. This might land like Currency Conversion in the Calculator app: native, genuinely useful, and somehow never as widely adopted as the “this kills X” headlines predicted. Native features win on convenience. They rarely win the people who actually care about the category.
If your app is a feature, worry. If it’s a workflow, you’ve got room.
If your users are under 18… well good luck
Child accounts are now mandatory for under-13s and stay active until 18. Parents pick which apps a child can use, Ask to Buy gates App Store and in-app purchases, and Apple is handing developers new APIs to tailor experiences by age. This is Apple answering regulators.
If your audience skews under 18 (games, social apps, entertainment..) this is real exposure. Acquisition, monetisation and even who can install you start running through a parental layer. I’d be auditing that funnel now and getting comfortable with the age-range APIs before they’re table stakes.
If your growth plan for the next year is “better screenshots”, well you might a be a bit outdated… The apps that win will treat the page as a living surface, get on App Intents early, and experiment with new assets and available features.
What are you all thinking? 👀
Julie - freelance Growth Consultant specialising in Apple Ads, ASO and CRO.
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