How to Create App Store Screenshots

What screenshots actually do

A screenshot set is not documentation. It is the only part of your listing that appears in search results alongside your competitors, and it has to work in the two or three seconds someone spends scanning a results page. The App Store shows the first three portrait screenshots inline, without any tap or scroll — which means the install decision is usually made against three images, before your description, your rating breakdown, or your feature list is ever seen.

That is the single most useful thing to internalise, because it changes where the effort goes. Most teams spread attention evenly across eight slides. The distribution of attention is not even. Slides one through three are competing for the install; slides four through ten are supporting a decision that has mostly already been made.

How many screenshots to make

Apple allows up to 10 screenshots per device size per locale, and Google Play allows 2–8. That is the ceiling, not the recommendation. Looking at what apps that take the channel seriously actually ship:

The bimodal shape is worth noticing: a large cluster at the 10-slide maximum, and a broad middle around six to eight. The apps at ten are usually large publishers with localisation teams and something new to say each season. The middle is where most teams should aim — enough room to cover the core jobs your app does, without padding the set with slides nobody scrolls to.

Category norms vary more than you would expect, and matching your category is a reasonable default:

Communication apps run the longest sets in the archive — a median of 10, the maximum — because they are usually explaining several distinct features to several distinct audiences. Music and Food & Drink apps sit at six: the product is simpler to explain and the decision is faster. If your set is materially shorter than your category's median, you are probably leaving space on the page unused.

Step 1: Read the category before designing

Screenshot conventions are category-specific, and violating them costs you more than it differentiates you. A user scanning finance apps has a mental model of what a trustworthy finance listing looks like; a set that looks like a game reads as unserious rather than fresh.

Spend twenty minutes in Explore filtered to your category and note four things across the top ten listings: how many slides they use, whether the first slide leads with a benefit or a feature, whether the device frame is present or the UI floats free, and where — if anywhere — social proof appears in the sequence. Those four decisions account for most of what distinguishes a professional set from an amateur one.

The ASO screenshot examples guide walks through real sets pattern by pattern if you would rather start from annotated examples than raw browsing.

Step 2: Write the captions before opening a design tool

This is the step most teams skip and most regret. Write the headline for every slide as plain text, in order, before you touch a layout. If the set does not make sense as a list of sentences, no amount of gradient work will save it.

A structure that holds up across categories:

• Slide 1 — the claim. What your app does for the user, in their words. This is the one that has to work in a search result next to four competitors.
• Slides 2–3 — the proof. The two capabilities that make the claim credible. One per slide, no bundling.
• Slide 4 — the reassurance. Ratings, awards, press, user counts, or a security posture if you are asking for sensitive data.
• Slides 5+ — the breadth. Secondary features, platform coverage, integrations. Useful to the already interested.

Keep headlines to three to six words. They are rendered at a size where a full sentence becomes unreadable, and the constraint forces the specificity that makes a caption work. "Track every subscription in one place" earns its slide; "Powerful subscription management for modern life" does not.

Step 3: Choose a layout pattern

Four layout patterns cover almost every set on the store, and the choice is mostly a trade between legibility and atmosphere.

• Caption Heavy — the headline takes a third or more of the frame and the UI supports it. The right default when your value proposition needs explaining rather than showing.
• Floating UI — interface fragments on a plain field with no device frame. The most legible option at thumbnail size, because it crops away everything except the interaction being demonstrated.
• Panoramic — a full-bleed image carries the slide and the UI overlays it. Strong for travel, food, and entertainment, where the feeling is the product.
• Device-in-Hand — the device appears as a physical object, often tilted or held. Adds real-world credibility but shrinks and skews the actual UI, so the caption has to carry more.

You do not have to pick one for the whole set. A common and effective arrangement is a Panoramic or Device-in-Hand opener for atmosphere, followed by Floating UI slides where the features get explained legibly.

Step 4: Build the set

Open the screenshot generator — or start from one of the 26 sets in the template gallery, which arrive with palette, typeface, and layout already decided.

1. Set the brand first. Primary colour, secondary colour, background, and typeface. Doing this before any slide exists means every slide inherits it, which is what makes a set look like a set.
2. Build slide one completely. Layout, caption, screenshot, spacing. Get it right before making any others.
3. Duplicate rather than create. Duplicating slide one carries the type scale and caption position forward. Creating each slide fresh is how sets drift.
4. Swap the screenshot and caption on each duplicate, changing the layout variant only where the content genuinely needs it.
5. Check the set at thumbnail size. Shrink the preview until each slide is about an inch wide — roughly its size in a search result. Any caption you cannot read at that size is not doing its job.

Step 5: Export at the right sizes

App Store Connect rejects files whose dimensions do not match an accepted resolution exactly. The primary iPhone size is 6.9" at 1320×2868; upload only that and Apple scales it for smaller iPhones automatically. iPad listings require 13" at 2064×2752. Google Play is looser: 320–3840 pixels per side, aspect ratio no more extreme than 2:1, and 2–8 screenshots per device type.

The generator designs at one canvas size and exports pixel-exact files for every resolution in one pass, so this step is a checkbox rather than a re-layout. The complete specification, including the format rules that cause rejections, is in the App Store screenshot sizes guide.

Two things worth doing that most apps skip

Ship a preview video. The video slot sits above the screenshots and autoplays muted in search results. Only 220 of the 918 listings in the archive use it — under a quarter. That makes it the least contested piece of real estate on a product page. The Video Studio builds one from the slides you have already designed.

Treat the set as iterable.The archive holds roughly two versions per tracked listing, meaning most apps that take ASO seriously have already changed their screenshots at least once. Screenshots are a landing page, not a deliverable — change one variable at a time, most usefully the first slide's headline, and watch conversion rather than opinion. The Time Machine shows what competitors changed and when.

Common mistakes

• Text sized for a desktop preview. Design reviews happen on a large monitor; screenshots are seen on a phone at thumbnail size. Check at final size, always.
• Feature names as headlines."Smart Sync" means nothing to someone who has not used the app. Say what it does for them.
• Burying the proof. If your strongest argument is a 4.9 rating or a notable customer, it belongs in the first three slides, not slide seven.
• Idealised UI that does not exist. Users compare the screenshots to the app after installing. A gap between them shows up in reviews and refunds.
• Landscape by default. Unless the app is landscape-only, portrait gets three times the shelf space in search results — 80% of archived screenshots are portrait for exactly this reason.
• One set for every market. If you have meaningful install volume outside your home locale, the imagery and the featured feature should change, not just the language.

Frequently asked questions