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Startups & SaaS

How to name an app without putting "app" in the name

8 min read

Nobody needs to be told that an app is an app. They found it in an app store, on a phone, next to other apps. The word describes the delivery format, which the customer already knows, using space that could have carried something they do not.

It is also the least available word in software, which is why the names that use it tend to arrive with a hyphen or a digit attached.

So this guide is about two things: what to name instead, and the tests specific to app names. An app name lives in places a company name never goes — under an icon, inside a notification, in a truncated store listing, in a voice command — and each of those has its own way of breaking a name.

Name the outcome, not the format

Ask what is different for the user after they have used this. Faster planning, calmer finances, better photographs, easier collaboration, less time in a queue. That change is your naming territory.

'App' contributes nothing to that, and neither do the words that usually accompany it — mobile, go, now, pro, hub. All of them describe the container. None of them describe the reason somebody installed it.

Start from a plain paragraph describing what the product does and who it is for, then underline the outcomes rather than the features. Features move; the outcome is what the name should be attached to.

Use the feeling of the experience

Apps have a texture in a way that most software does not, because people touch them daily. A product can be energetic, quiet, playful, precise, premium or reassuring, and users notice the mismatch when the name and the interface disagree.

Pick a word that captures the feeling you want and use it as a seed. It does not have to survive into the final name — its job is to supply a sound and a personality, so that the invented result feels like the product rather than merely fitting it.

This is worth doing deliberately because it is the thing that makes an app name feel considered. A calm finance app called something sharp and clipped will always be slightly at odds with itself.

Explore metaphors and objects

Abstract benefits do not generate names; images do. A navigation product suggests compass, path, orbit, trail. A collaboration product suggests bridge, weave, circle, thread. A focus product suggests lantern, shutter, still, harbour.

The metaphor does not need to appear intact in the finished name — it supplies sounds and associations you can transform. 'Compass' can become Compa, Cassio, Ompas or something that keeps only the rhythm. Fifty ways to transform a word is the catalogue.

Concrete objects also have a practical advantage for apps: they are easy to draw. An icon has to work at the size of a fingernail, and a name that already contains an image gives your designer somewhere to start.

The five places an app name has to work

This is what makes app naming different, and each one eliminates candidates that looked fine in a document. Run all five before deciding — none of them takes longer than a minute.

Under the icon

A home screen shows only about a dozen characters before it truncates, and it does not truncate politely. Write your candidate out and cut it at twelve characters to see what your users will actually read every day.

This is the strongest practical argument for a short app name, and it is a much better argument than character-count aesthetics: what is visible under the icon is the name, and anything past the cut may as well not exist.

In the store listing

App stores cap the displayed name at roughly thirty characters and show far fewer in search results and on narrow screens. Anything you were planning to append — a tagline, a category word, the phrase 'the app for' — will be cut off, so the name has to do its work in the first few words.

Say 'Download ___' out loud, and imagine the name beside screenshots and a star rating. A candidate that only works with 'App' attached does not yet have enough identity to stand on its own.

In a notification

Notifications put your name in front of somebody who is doing something else, in a small bold label above a sentence. Read a mock notification aloud — the name, then the message — and check that the name reads as a source rather than as part of the text.

Names built from common verbs and adjectives are the ones that fail here, because they merge into the message. A notification from an app called 'Ready' or 'Later' is genuinely ambiguous.

Said to a voice assistant

'Open ___.' Users increasingly say app names to a device rather than tapping, and a name that gets misheard becomes a name that opens something else. Test it out loud, ideally on an actual phone.

The candidates that struggle are the ones that sound like an ordinary phrase, and the ones with an unusual spelling whose pronunciation is ambiguous — a name that could be said two ways will be said the wrong way half the time.

In a recommendation

The way most apps actually spread. 'You should get ___' has to be a sentence somebody can say and somebody else can act on without a spelling. If the listener has to ask how it is written, the recommendation dies there.

Which makes the spoken test the most valuable of the five: say the name once to somebody and ask them to find it in a store. Watch what they type.

Test the icon and the name together

An app is a small square and a short word, and those two things are read as one unit. Mock them up together before committing — a name that carries an image and an icon that reinforces it is far more memorable than either alone.

It is also where over-compression shows. Shaving a letter to make a name shorter helps nothing if the result becomes unreadable at icon size or ambiguous when spoken; clarity beats a character every time on a screen that small.

Do not copy the category leader

Landing one letter from a famous app feels like borrowing familiarity. What it actually borrows is their brand recognition, in the direction that makes you look derivative and them look original.

It also creates two concrete problems: store search will show them above you for your own name, and a well-known mark attracts protection well beyond its immediate category. Take the structural lesson — that a two-syllable invented word ending in a vowel works — and leave the specific word alone.

Keep the domain strategy clean

An exact-match .com is worth having when you can get it, and it is not worth damaging the name for. A deliberate misspelling adopted to force availability costs you a correction in every spoken recommendation, which for an app is the channel that matters most.

Compare the two routes honestly: a modified brand with a clean exact match, or the brand you wanted with a sensible modifier in the address. For an app, the balance tilts slightly toward the exact match, because app names spread by being said out loud — the full comparison is here.

And what you should not do is take the name with 'app' in it because that version was free. That is the workaround this whole guide exists to avoid.

Choose a name that outlives the first feature

Apps evolve faster than most software, and in a specific direction: they add a web version, then a team plan, then an API, and at some point stop being an app at all.

So read every finalist against that trajectory. Does it still make sense as a web product? As a platform? As a company with three products? A name containing 'app' fails all three by construction, which is the last and best reason to leave the word out.

Before you decide

  • Named after the outcome, not the format
  • Twelve characters or fewer visible under an icon
  • Works as a store listing without a category word attached
  • Reads as a source, not as text, in a notification
  • Survives being said to a voice assistant
  • Somebody can find it in a store after hearing it once
  • Mocked up beside a real icon
  • Not one letter from a category leader
  • Still makes sense when there is a web version

In short

Drop the word and name the outcome instead. Then test the candidate where an app name actually lives: truncated under an icon at about twelve characters, in a notification, in a store listing, said to a voice assistant, and in a recommendation somebody has to act on without a spelling.

Frequently asked questions

Is it ever right to put 'app' in the name?

Where the word is genuinely part of an established identity, or where it forms part of a real word you are using deliberately. As a solution to the name being taken, it is the version of the problem this guide exists to avoid.

How short does an app name need to be?

Short enough to survive the home screen, which shows roughly a dozen characters. That is a real constraint rather than an aesthetic preference — anything past the truncation is not part of the name your users see.

Does the app name have to match the company name?

No, and for a single-product company it usually should. Where you expect a portfolio, deciding the relationship early is worth doing properly — see how to build a naming system.

Should the name contain a keyword for app store search?

Store search draws on more than the display name, and stuffing the name with category words costs you the thing the name is for. Keep the name distinctive and put the category language where the store expects descriptive text.

What if the perfect name is taken in the app store but not as a domain?

Treat the store as the binding constraint. A domain collision is an inconvenience; two apps with the same name in the same store means competing for your own listing forever, and the customer cannot tell which one their friend meant.

Sources

These support factual background only. The guide itself is original writing, and nothing here should be read as legal advice.

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