Screenshots are the part of a store listing most people actually look at: many visitors swipe through the first few images and decide without reading the description. Yet they're often made the night before release.
This is a practical checklist for doing them properly without a design team: the sizes Apple and Google accept today, how to build a "panorama" set that reads as one scene, and how to keep localized versions under control.
1. Start from the sizes, not the design
Getting the canvas wrong is a common reason an upload fails, so pick sizes first.
App Store (iPhone)
- 6.9″ display: 1320 × 2868, 1290 × 2796 or 1260 × 2736 (portrait). This is the set Apple asks for.
- 6.5″ display: 1284 × 2778 or 1242 × 2688. Only needed if you don't provide a 6.9″ set.
- Smaller iPhones are scaled down from these automatically, so you rarely need to make them yourself.
App Store (iPad), only if your app runs on iPad:
- 13″ display: 2064 × 2752 or 2048 × 2732.
Apple accepts 1 to 10 screenshots per set, as PNG or JPEG, and no alpha channel. A PNG exported with transparency is rejected even when it looks opaque, so flatten it before uploading.
Google Play
- JPEG or 24-bit PNG, no alpha.
- Each side between 320 and 3840 px, and the long side can't be more than twice the short side.
- At least 2 screenshots, up to 8 per device type (phone, 7″ tablet, 10″ tablet, and so on).
- To be eligible for Google's larger recommendation surfaces, apps need at least 4 screenshots at 1080 px or more: 1080 × 1920 portrait or 1920 × 1080 landscape.
- The feature graphic is a separate, fixed 1024 × 500 image.
One trap: modern iPhone screenshots are taller than 2:1 (1284 × 2778 is about 2.16), so you can't reuse your App Store files on Google Play. Plan for a separate 9:16 set, usually 1080 × 1920.
2. Design the first two screenshots as a headline
In search results the store shows only the first few images, often cropped. Treat screenshot one and two as your pitch:
- One idea per screenshot, written as a short benefit ("Split bills in seconds"), not a feature name ("Bill Splitting Module").
- Big type. Store thumbnails are small, so check every caption at thumbnail size before you call it done.
- Show real UI with real-looking data. Empty states and lorem ipsum read as unfinished.
- Keep text away from the edges. Google notes that text near the edges can be cut off on some surfaces, especially for tablets.
3. Panorama layouts: one wide canvas, cut into slides
A "panorama" set is designed as one long image and then cut into individual screenshots. When someone swipes, a background shape, a gradient or a tilted phone continues across the seam, and the set feels like one story instead of five unrelated posters.
How to do it by hand:
- Make a canvas whose width is N × the slide width. For five iPhone slides at 1284 × 2778 that's 6420 × 2778.
- Add guides at every multiple of the slide width. These are your seams.
- Put captions and the main device of each slide inside its own section, with a safe margin from the seams.
- Let only decorative elements (backgrounds, shapes, a secondary device) cross a seam. Never put a caption or a key part of the UI on one.
- Export the full canvas, then slice it into N files at exactly the slide width.
Step 5 is where people lose an evening: a slice that is one pixel off fails validation. Whatever tool you use, export at the exact pixel sizes above and check the dimensions of every file before uploading.
4. Localization without copying files around
If your app is translated, your screenshots should be too. Localized captions often matter more than localized UI, because the caption is what people read first. A few habits keep this manageable:
- Separate text from artwork. Keep captions as live text layers, not baked into images, so a translation is a text change and not a redesign.
- Design for the longest language. German or Finnish captions often run noticeably longer than English. Leave room, or allow two lines.
- Keep a caption sheet. One table with a row per screenshot and a column per language makes reviews and updates much easier than opening ten design files.
- Start with your top markets. Localize where your installs come from first.
- Swap the UI screenshots too when the app shows a lot of text, so the caption and the phone agree.
Doing it in the browser
You can do all of this in Figma or Photoshop with a template and some patience. If you'd rather not set up the canvas, guides and slicing yourself, we build a free browser editor for exactly this at Intenseloop: AppScreen. It lays your screenshots out on one panorama canvas with iPhone and Android phone frames and exports slides at the store sizes, and your work stays in your browser.
Whatever tool you pick, the rules above are what matter: exact sizes, no transparency, a strong first two slides, and captions you can translate without starting over.
Top comments (1)
Good checklist, especially the alpha channel note. That one catches a lot of people. One thing I'd add for apps built with AI builders like Lovable or Bolt: screenshots that still show the template's sample data are one of the things that make a reviewer see the app as a lookalike under Guideline 4.3(b), and Guideline 2.3.3 asks for screenshots that show the app in use. Shooting them from the real app with realistic data covers both.