Google Play feature graphic generator

What a Google Play feature graphic has to be

Two lines of Google’s requirements decide everything on this page. The first is the size: 1024 pixels by 500 pixels, written as a dimension and not as a minimum, which is why there is no size selector here. A file at 2048 by 1000 has the identical shape and is still the wrong answer. The second is the format: JPEG or 24-bit PNG with no alpha. Both were read from Google’s preview assets requirements on September 8, 2026, and both are quoted verbatim beside the controls that depend on them.

It is also not optional. Google states that you must provide a feature graphic to publish your store listing, which puts it in the same category as the app icon rather than in the same category as the preview video, which they merely recommend. The graphic is what Play shows as the cover image for that video when one exists, and what appears when your app turns up in the large-format collections on the store.

The alpha channel, and why this is not a canvas export

Twenty-four-bit PNG means three channels of eight bits each: red, green and blue, and nothing after them. A browser canvas does not produce that file. Every canvas is RGBA internally, and every PNG it writes carries a fourth channel, so an image with nothing transparent anywhere still leaves as a 32-bit file full of solid 255s. It opens correctly in every viewer you own, which is precisely what makes the rejection confusing when it arrives.

So the PNG here is not written by the canvas. The pixels are read back out, inspected, found to be opaque, and encoded into a color type that has no transparency channel in the format at all. That happens in a background thread, and the bar underneath the button counts rows actually written rather than estimating a duration. If that path cannot run, the page says so and points at JPEG instead of quietly handing you the 32-bit file — a fallback that produces a rejected upload is worse than an honest refusal. JPEG needs none of this care, because the format has no alpha channel to leave out in the first place.

The middle of the canvas is not yours

Google gives two pieces of advice on the same page that pull in opposite directions. They ask you to keep prominent visuals and the focal point towards the center of the graphic. They also state that users watch your preview video by tapping the play button that overlays on your feature graphic. If your listing has a video, then, a control lands on the exact spot you were told to fill.

The circle drawn over the preview is there to hold both ideas at once: center the picture, keep the words off the middle. Google publishes no diameter for that button, so the circle is a guide you size yourself rather than a figure copied from a specification, and the panel says as much rather than dressing an estimate up as a rule. The words are a list of text layers, each with its own size, color, typeface and anchor; layers on the same anchor stack under one another instead of overlapping. When any layer actually crosses the circle, the page tells you before you download rather than after. Neither the circle nor the margin box is ever encoded into the file; they exist only on screen.

Google’s advice to keep background elements toward the edges is easier to follow with a photo behind the design. When the main image does not fill the whole canvas, the Background control can switch from a solid color to a background image of your own. Cover fills the 1024 by 500 frame and crops the overflow, with a slider for the axis that can actually move; contain shows the whole photo inside a color band. An optional shade, even or darker toward one edge, keeps text readable over a busy picture. A large photo shows a bar that counts bytes read, then says it is decoding, because browsers report no progress for that step.

The same honesty applies to the margin. Google names cutoff zones and advises against putting a brand logo, app name, slogan or main interface inside them, and advises restricting background elements to the edges — but publishes no pixel figures for any of it. The margin box is therefore adjustable and described as yours, not theirs.

What the guidance asks you not to do

Three of Google’s recommendations are worth repeating because they contradict the obvious first draft. Do not use prominent branding similar to your app icon: the two are shown together, and a graphic that restates the icon reads as a duplication. Avoid fine detail, which disappears at the size a phone actually renders this. And avoid pure white, black or dark gray, which blend into Play’s own background. A graphic that conveys what the app does will beat a larger copy of the logo.

Related jobs

The other store wants a different table entirely, and the App Store screenshot generator covers it — Apple publishes several accepted sizes and refuses alpha channels for the same reason Google does. If the framing you want has nothing to do with a store listing, screenshot beautifier is the simpler page for a capture that just needs a background and a border. An existing graphic that is close but not exact goes through resize image, which will land on 1024 by 500 without recomposing anything. When you are unsure what you already have, image dimensions reports stored and displayed sizes separately, which is the usual reason a file looks right and measures wrong. And if the finished PNG weighs more than you want to upload, compress image trades quality for size without touching the 1024 by 500 that Play Console checks first.

Nothing you drop on this page is transmitted. Decoding, composition and PNG encoding all happen in this tab, and there is no upload route on this domain for a file to travel down — not a slow one, not a private one, none. That claim is checkable in about ten seconds: open your browser’s network panel, build a graphic, and count the requests. How to verify local processing walks through what you should and should not see.