Update the App Privacy label step by step

Open your app in App Store Connect, click App Privacy in the sidebar, then Get Started, and answer three questions for every data type you collect: whether it is linked to the user's identity, whether it is used for tracking, and what purpose it serves, then click Publish.

The App Privacy label is the questionnaire behind the nutrition-label graphic on your App Store product page. Nothing about it is automatic: there is no public API for it, and a build does not touch it. Someone opens App Store Connect, answers a fixed set of questions per data type, and publishes. The fastest way to answer accurately is to treat your PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy manifest, if you maintain one, as the worksheet, because it already asks you the same three questions Apple asks in the console. Here is the walkthrough, question by question.

Where do you start the App Privacy questionnaire?

In App Store Connect, open Apps, select your app, and click App Privacy under General in the sidebar. Click Get Started. A dialog asks whether you or your third-party partners collect data from the app. Choose No, we do not collect data from this app and click Save if that is true, no further steps apply. Choose Yes, we collect data from this app and click Next if it is not.

You are then shown the full list of data type categories, things like Contact Info, Health & Fitness, Location, Identifiers, Usage Data and Diagnostics. Check every category your app or an SDK inside it collects and click Save. Under-selecting here is the most common mistake: a category you skip never gets its follow-up questions, so the label ends up silently incomplete rather than flagged as wrong.

What questions does each data type ask?

Back on the App Privacy page, click into each data type you selected. Three questions repeat for every one:

• Linked to User. Is this data connected to the person's identity, an account, a device, or other identifying detail? Apple treats anything you could reasonably tie back to one person as linked, even indirectly, and personal data under privacy law is always linked. Data you have genuinely stripped of identifiers and cannot re-link counts as not linked.
• Used for Tracking. Do you combine this data with data about the same user or device collected from other companies' apps, websites or offline sources, for targeted advertising or ad measurement, or share it with a data broker for that purpose? If the data never leaves the device in an identifiable form, or a broker only uses it for fraud prevention, that is not tracking under Apple's definition.
• Purposes. Pick every reason you use the data: App Functionality (authentication, fraud prevention, performance, support), Analytics, Product Personalization, Developer's Advertising or Marketing, Third-Party Advertising, or Other Purposes.

Answer honestly per data type. The same category, Email Address for instance, can be linked and used for App Functionality in one app and linked, used for tracking, and shared for Third-Party Advertising in another. There is no single correct answer, only the one that matches what your build actually does.

How do you turn a privacy manifest entry into a label answer?

If your app ships a PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy file, either your own or one bundled by an SDK, each collected-data entry in it already records a data type, whether that data is linked to the user, whether it is used for tracking, and an array of purposes. That is not a coincidence: it is the same three-question shape App Store Connect asks. Open the manifest, or generate an Xcode Privacy Report from a fresh archive to see every manifest bundled into your binary in one place, and go entry by entry: for each collected data type, open the matching category in App Store Connect and set Linked to User and Used for Tracking to whatever the manifest declares, then check off the matching purposes.

Two gaps to watch. First, a manifest can list a data type your label has never mentioned, usually because an SDK started collecting something in a recent version. Add it. Second, App Store Connect's data type list is broader than what fits neatly into a manifest entry (server-side collection, account data your backend stores directly), so the manifest is a floor for your label, not a ceiling. Walk both lists, not just one.

What happens when you click Publish?

Once every selected data type has its answers, scroll to Product Page Preview and click See Details to see the label as shoppers will. Click Publish in the top right, then confirm in the dialog that your responses are accurate and comply with the App Review Guidelines and applicable law. Publishing updates your live product page immediately. It does not require a new build or App Review, and it applies retroactively to the app that is already live, which is exactly why a stale label can sit uncorrected for months with no build failure to catch it.

Answering the console by hand is unavoidable since Apple gives no API for this label, but catching when your answers have gone stale does not have to be. StoreParity's apple.privacy-label check compares every .xcprivacy file against your live label, or against the last fingerprint your team attested to, and flags a mismatch instead of waiting for a reviewer or a user to notice first.