TL;DR. Pre-orders let you publish an unreleased app’s product page in App Store Connect up to 180 days before release, collect commitments, and deliver every pre-order as a single automatic download the moment your release date hits. It only works for apps that have never been released in that country or region — you can’t pre-order an update to something already live. If you’re planning a launch, pre-orders concentrate your day-one installs into one moment instead of spreading them across the first week, which is the opposite of what phased release does.

Most indie developers ship a new app the same way every time: submit, get approved, hit release, then spend launch day refreshing App Store Connect and hoping Product Hunt traffic converts. Pre-orders are the mechanic that lets you build demand before that day even arrives — and almost nobody outside gaming studios uses them.

How far in advance can you open App Store pre-orders?

For a brand-new app that has never been released in a given country or region, you can set an expected release date up to 180 days out. If your app is already live in at least one other region and you’re opening pre-orders for a new region, that window extends to 365 days.

You enable this in App Store Connect under the app’s Pricing and Availability section, before the app has ever gone to “Ready for Sale” in that location. Once an app has been released for download in a country or region, it’s permanently ineligible for pre-order there — you cannot use pre-orders for a major version update or a relaunch of something users can already download.

Do pre-order downloads happen all at once or gradually?

All at once. On the release date you set, every customer who pre-ordered gets notified and the app downloads automatically to their device (assuming automatic downloads are enabled) — there is no staged delivery. That’s the opposite of phased release, which spreads an update’s rollout to existing users over a 7-day, percentage-based schedule. Pre-orders are a mechanic for concentrating a first release; phased release is a mechanic for de-risking a later one. Don’t confuse them.

That concentration is the actual point. A pile of pre-order commitments that all convert to downloads in the same 24 hours produces the kind of single-day install spike that App Store discovery surfaces — like New Apps We Love — are built to notice. Apple doesn’t publish the exact weighting, but a launch spread thin across a slow first week is a materially different signal than the same total number of installs landing on one day.

What happens to the release date if your plans change?

You can edit it at any time before it passes in a given country or region — there’s no limit on how many times. The new date just has to stay inside the original eligibility window: within 180 days of the pre-order’s first publication for a first-time release, or within 365 days for an app expanding into a new region. Once the release date passes in a region, it locks — you can no longer move it there, even if the version isn’t approved yet.

Pricing has its own rule during this window: if you drop the price after someone has already pre-ordered, they get charged the lower price at release, not the price they originally accepted. Raising the price doesn’t retroactively charge existing pre-orders more — it only applies to new pre-orders placed after the change. No one is charged anything until the release date itself; a pre-order is a commitment, not a transaction.

Submitting and updating your build during the pre-order period

Your app still has to clear App Review before the pre-order listing goes live — you can’t publish a pre-order page for a build that hasn’t been approved. Once it’s live, you can submit new versions during the pre-order window the same way you would for any released app: pick automatic, manual, or scheduled release. Whatever version is approved and released when the pre-order date hits is the one every customer receives — so if you’re iterating on your build right up to launch, make sure your final submission is released (not sitting in Pending Developer Release) before the release date arrives, or customers get an older build than you intended.

Two more eligibility gaps worth knowing before you plan around this: standalone In-App Purchases can’t be pre-ordered on their own, and app bundles are ineligible for pre-order entirely — a bundle requires every app inside it to already be Ready for Sale in at least one region.

Before you set up a pre-order

  1. Confirm the app has never been released for download in the country or region you’re opening pre-orders in — this only works for genuinely new availability, not relaunches.
  2. Pick a release date you can actually hit. You can push it later inside the eligibility window, but once it passes in a region it’s locked.
  3. Treat your final pre-launch build submission like a hard deadline — set the release option to automatic or release it manually with days of buffer, so an approved-but-unreleased version doesn’t ship stale to everyone on day one.
  4. If your subtitle, keyword field, or screenshots aren’t finished, finish them before submission — they go live with the same build every pre-order customer receives, all at once, with no second chance at a slow rollout.