App Store screenshot size

Apple publishes a complete table of accepted screenshot sizes, and almost every problem with App Store screenshots comes from reading one row of it instead of the sentence above it.

The sentence: “You can upload one to 10 screenshots in .jpeg, .jpg, and .png formats”, followed by a note in its own box — “Images can’t include alpha channels or transparencies.”

Everything here is quoted from App Store Connect Help, Screenshot specifications, read on September 7, 2026.

The two sizes you are actually required to supply

Most of the table is optional. Two rows carry a requirement, and one of them is conditional:

Read the second one carefully, because it is the whole shape of the system. The 6.5“ display is required unless you provide 6.9“. Supply 6.9“ and every smaller iPhone is covered, since each smaller row carries a note of the same form: “If screenshots with the accepted sizes aren’t provided, scaled screenshots for 6.9” displays are used“ — or for 6.5“, or 6.1“, depending on the row. The fallbacks chain downward.

So for an iPhone app the practical answer is one set at 6.9“, and for an iPad app one set at 13“. Everything else is optional detail work.

The accepted sizes

Three things stand out. The 6.9“ row accepts three different sizes, so there is no single correct iPhone screenshot — 1320 × 2868 is simply the largest of the three and the one a current Pro Max produces. Mac is specified as a ratio with four resolutions rather than a device pixel count. And the Watch row carries a rule the others do not: “You must use the same screenshot size for Apple Watch consistently across all localizations for the app.”

The alpha channel rule catches more people than the sizes do

“Images can’t include alpha channels or transparencies” is one line in a gray box, and it rejects uploads constantly. The reason is that most tools that write a PNG write RGBA whether or not anything in the picture is transparent — a browser canvas always does, and so do several design applications on export. The file looks completely opaque and still carries a fourth channel full of 255s.

There are two clean ways out. Save as JPEG, which has no alpha channel to begin with, and accept the compression. Or write a PNG in a color type that has no alpha: PNG defines truecolor and palette forms that store no transparency at all, and any encoder that picks one of those produces a file Apple accepts. Converting an existing RGBA PNG is the usual fix — PNG to JPG flattens it against a background you choose, which is exactly the operation the format change performs anyway.

Screenshots do not have to be screenshots

Nothing in Apple’s specification says the image must be a capture of your app. The requirement is a file at an accepted size, in an accepted format, without alpha. Almost every successful App Store listing takes advantage of this: a caption, a background, and the app screen placed inside it, sized so the text is readable at thumbnail scale in search results.

That is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon fighting the simulator for a pixel-exact capture. A composition built at 1320 × 2868 satisfies the specification precisely as well as a raw capture does.

Getting a file to an accepted size

A capture from the wrong device. Simulator captures come out at that simulator’s resolution, which is frequently a row Apple no longer lists. The image resizer crops and scales in one pass to numbers you type.

Not sure what you have. Image dimensions reports the stored size and the displayed size separately and changes nothing, which is the fastest way to check a capture against a row in the table above.

Building the composition. The App Store screenshot generator composes a capture onto any of the accepted sizes with a caption band and a background, and writes its PNG in a color type that carries no alpha channel — which is the part a canvas export gets wrong.

A plain capture that needs framing. Screenshot beautifier puts a capture on a background with padding and rounded corners, which is the same composition idea at a different aspect ratio.

Checklist

1. Decide which platforms you ship on. iPhone means 6.9“; iPad means 13“; everything else falls back from those.
2. Pick one of the three accepted 6.9“ pairs and build every screenshot at it. 1320 × 2868 is the largest.
3. Up to 10 per display size, and per localization.
4. JPEG, or a PNG written without an alpha channel. An ordinary RGBA PNG is rejected even when it is completely opaque.
5. Design for the thumbnail. The first two screenshots are what most people ever see, at a fraction of full size.

Sources

• App Store Connect Help, Screenshot specifications — “You can upload one to 10 screenshots in .jpeg, .jpg, and .png formats”, “Images can’t include alpha channels or transparencies”, the per-display size tables, “Required if app runs on iPad”, “Required if app runs on iPhone and screenshots for 6.9” display aren’t provided“, the scaling notes for each smaller display, and the Apple Watch consistency rule. Read September 7, 2026.