What they actually are
You may simply line up raw screens, but most apps turn them into marketing images with a short headline and a background. In search results they appear small, and a bare screen rarely says what the app is.
A headline lands harder when it says what changes for the user rather than naming a feature. Not "voice input supported" but "just say it and it's logged". Feature names only mean something to people who already know the app.
Size and how many
| Item | What to use |
|---|---|
| iPhone size | 1290 x 2796 pixels (portrait) |
| How many you can upload | per device size, up to 10 |
| How many get seen | the first three do most of the work. Five is plenty. |
| Format | PNG or JPEG (no transparency) |
| If the app supports iPad | you need a separate iPad set |
Screenshots taken straight off a phone keep the clock, the signal bars and the battery exactly as they were. Review will not reject you for it, but a red battery or a stray notification makes the whole listing look careless. Use a cleaned-up screen instead.
How long they take
Time to get five done. Working in a design tool, most of it goes into the background and into nudging the type.
| How | For five |
|---|---|
| Do it yourself in a design tool | 2-3 hours (20-30 minutes each) |
| Hire a designer | Days to a week, including back and forth |
| sukuji | A minute or two |
The real time sink is not the background, it is deciding what to say. Once you know the one line, the work goes quickly. Start before you know it, and you will rebuild the same screen five times.
What they cost
| What you pay for | Cost |
|---|---|
| Publishing on the App Store | Apple Developer Program - the yearly membership 99 USD per year (as of September 13, 2026) |
| Tools | Design software and assets. You can get by with free ones. |
What you are charged locally moves with exchange rates and tax, and the price itself can change, so check Apple's own page for the current figure before you pay.
The fee is only due when you publish. Building locally and preparing artwork cost nothing, so you can have the screenshots ready long before you pay anything.
What to watch for in 2026
- For iPhone, one set made at the largest size is reused on smaller devices. You no longer need a separate set per screen size the way you once did.
- Apple changes these requirements from time to time. The sizes here may not hold forever. Just before you submit, read what App Store Connect shows you on screen.
- More people build these with image AI now, but text drawn by an image model comes out malformed. Have the model make the picture, then lay the text over it yourself.
If you ship in more than one language, screenshots are uploaded per language. Leave one language empty and it falls back to the other, which means shoppers see a row of images they cannot read. At the very least, swap the first one.
Where people trip up
| Common mistake | What to do |
|---|---|
| Text too small | It shrinks in search results. Bigger headline, fewer words. |
| Does not match the app | Showing a feature the app lacks gets flagged in review. |
| Broken letterforms | Do not let an image model draw the text. Lay it over afterwards. |
| Wrong size | The wrong dimensions simply will not upload. |
| Weak first image | It is the one people actually see. Put your best thing there. |
You can reorder them later. Swapping the first one and watching what happens is the cheapest experiment there is, and usually the most effective. You do not have to rebuild the set.
How to make them work
Shipping solo means being found inside the store with no ad budget. The screenshots are the last nudge before someone taps or scrolls past. In rough order of what pays off.
1. Put your effort into the first three
In search results, portrait screenshots show three across (landscape ones show a single image). Which means three is all anyone sees before deciding to open your page. Numbers four and five are only reached by people who already care. Spend roughly seventy percent of your effort on the first, thirty on the next two.
An app preview video takes that first slot if you have one. If you do not, the first screenshot fills it. Solo, finishing five good screenshots pays back faster than producing a video.
2. One idea per image
Put two in and neither gets read. Say what it does once per image, five things across five images. Rather than listing features, write what changes for the person using it.
3. Make the text twice as big as feels right
In the listing these are shown at a quarter of their size or less. What reads fine on your monitor is unreadable in the row. At 1290 pixels wide, aim for headline letters around 90 to 130 pixels tall - about a tenth of the width.
| Element | What to use |
|---|---|
| Headline | Two lines at most. Three to five words a line sits well. |
| Supporting line | One line if any. The image should work without it. |
| Text inside the screen | Nobody reads it. It only has to look right. |
4. Make the five look like a set
Keep the headline position, the typeface and the background tone the same across all five and they read as one product. Build each one differently and it looks like a pile of odds and ends. Matching the background to your app icon ties the row together.
5. Use a real number if you have one
"Loved by many" does nothing."10,000 people use this" does. "Fast" does nothing."Exports in 3 seconds" does. A number reads as something checkable, so it earns trust in very few characters. Only if it is true. Claims that do not match reality get flagged in review.
6. Keep testing after launch
App Store Connect lets you run several versions of your screenshots against each other (product page optimisation). There is a limit on how many at once, so check the current rules in App Store Connect. It is available to solo developers too, and changing only the first image is the easiest way to use it.
Making them with sukuji
Upload up to three of your app screens, type the name and a description. A minute or two later you have five 1290 x 2796 PNGs. No sign-up.
Your screens are placed into a device frame and used as they are. The headline text is drawn by code, not by an image model. That is why the letters never break.