Wrong screenshot dimensions are one of the most common reasons a store submission bounces back, and it is an especially annoying one because nothing is actually wrong with the app. This is a complete reference for what each store accepts, what is mandatory versus optional, and the specific mistakes that cause rejections.
How Apple's requirements are structured
Apple does not ask for a screenshot set per device. It asks for a set per display size, and one set can cover several physical devices that share a screen size. This is the single most useful thing to understand, because it collapses a long device list into a short set of uploads.
For iPhone, Apple accepts two display sizes and requires at least one:
- 6.9 inch — 1320 x 2868 portrait, or 2868 x 1320 landscape. This covers the current large iPhones and is the set most listings lead with.
- 6.5 inch — 1284 x 2778 portrait, or 2778 x 1284 landscape. Also accepted at 1242 x 2688.
If you upload only the 6.9 inch set, Apple scales it down for smaller devices. That is usually fine, but text set at a small point size can soften noticeably once scaled, which is the argument for uploading both.
For iPad, the requirement is the 13 inch set at 2064 x 2752 portrait (2752 x 2064 landscape). Apple also accepts 2048 x 2732. If your app is iPhone-only you can skip iPad entirely — but if the app supports iPad and you skip the screenshots, the listing shows scaled iPhone art, which looks obviously wrong on a tablet.
Other platforms each have their own set: 2880 x 1800 for Mac, 410 x 502 for Apple Watch Ultra, and 3840 x 2160 for Vision Pro.
Apple's rules that trip people up
- Up to 10 screenshots per display size. Only the first two or three are visible without scrolling, so front-load your best material. - No alpha channel. Screenshots must be flattened. A PNG carrying transparency is rejected. - Correct aspect ratio, exactly. Being a few pixels off is a rejection, not a resize. - Device frames must not misrepresent real hardware. Stylised frames are fine; a frame that inaccurately imitates an Apple device is a review risk. - Localised screenshots are per-language. If you add a language, its screenshots fall back to your primary language until you upload replacements.
Google Play's requirements
Play is more permissive on dimensions and stricter on completeness. Phone screenshots must be:
- Between 320 px and 3840 px on any side.
- At least 1080 px on the shorter edge in practice, for a listing that looks sharp.
- Either 9:16 or 16:9 aspect ratio.
- At least 2, up to 8. Play will not let you publish with fewer than two.
The most commonly missed requirement is the feature graphic at 1024 x 500. It is mandatory for every listing, it cannot have transparency, and it appears at the top of your store page and in promotional placements. Many first-time submissions stall here.
Tablet screenshots are optional but consequential: without 7 inch and 10 inch sets, Play can limit your visibility in tablet search results and flag the listing as not optimised for larger screens. Wear OS, Android TV and Android Auto have their own slots, each required only if you declare support for that form factor.
What "safe area" means and why it matters
Both stores crop and round screenshot thumbnails in various placements. A headline sitting 20 px from the top edge can lose its ascenders in a rounded thumbnail. A practical rule is to keep all text within the middle 85 percent of the canvas, and nothing meaningful within about 6 percent of any edge.
The same logic applies more aggressively to Android adaptive icons, where only the centre 72 dp of a 108 dp canvas is guaranteed visible.
A workflow that avoids re-doing everything
The reason screenshot work balloons is that most people design at one size and then manually re-crop for the others. Every later copy change means repeating the whole process.
A better sequence:
- Design once at the largest required size. Everything else scales down cleanly; scaling up does not.
- Keep text as text, not baked into the captured screenshot image, so a copy change does not require a new capture.
- Decide the caption before the layout. Long headlines force layout changes; short ones do not.
- Export the full set in one pass, then check the two thumbnails that actually appear in search results.
- Verify against the current spec before every submission, because Apple in particular retires display sizes with little notice.
If you are doing this by hand in a general-purpose design tool, budget most of a day per release. Purpose-built tools — MoonStart among them — exist to render one design into every required size at once, which is the part genuinely worth automating.
Quick reference
- iPhone 6.9 inch: 1320 x 2868 - iPhone 6.5 inch: 1284 x 2778 - iPad 13 inch: 2064 x 2752 - Mac: 2880 x 1800 - Apple Watch Ultra: 410 x 502 - Vision Pro: 3840 x 2160 - Play phone: 1080 x 1920 minimum, 9:16 or 16:9 - Play feature graphic: 1024 x 500, mandatory
Check the App Store Connect and Play Console help pages before a release; these numbers move roughly once a year.