2026-10-06
Apple and Google's actual screenshot pixel requirements — and why the “incorrect size” error still happens
An Apple Developer Forums thread from earlier this year lays out a specific, familiar kind of frustration: “App Store Connect keeps rejecting my screenshot upload with an ‘incorrect size’ (or size invalid) error. I have already tried exporting the screenshot in all sizes and resolutions described in Apple’s documentation, but none of them are being accepted so far.” The poster eventually got it working — at 640×920 pixels, a size that doesn’t appear anywhere on Apple’s public screenshot-specifications page, because that particular upload field turned out to be the separate, smaller screenshot Apple’s review team uses to evaluate an in-app subscription flow, not the product-page screenshots everyone else is usually trying to size. The confusion is the point: Apple and Google Play each publish a real, specific spec for the screenshots a listing actually shows shoppers, and the two specs work on almost opposite logic from each other.
What Apple’s own spec actually requires
App Store Connect’s screenshot-specifications page states the baseline plainly: “You must include at least one screenshot and can upload up to 10 screenshots per device size in .jpeg, .jpg, or .png formats” — and, separately, “Images can’t include alpha channels or transparencies.” Underneath that, the page lists “Required device sizes” that are easy to miss because they're easy to satisfy: “iPhone: At least one screenshot for iPhone with Dynamic Island (medium display)” and, only “if your app supports iPadOS,” “At least one screenshot for iPad 13-inch display.” Everything else on the page — the other seven-plus iPhone and iPad display classes, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch — is optional, because of one more line: “If your app’s user interface is consistent across multiple device sizes and localizations, you only need to provide screenshots for the highest required resolution. App Store Connect automatically scales them down for smaller device sizes.”
Why the same device class lists three different pixel sizes
Here’s the part that actually produces “incorrect size” errors even from people reading the real page: Apple’s table doesn’t give each display class one number. The class labeled “iPhone with Dynamic Island (large display)” — which currently covers the iPhone Air, iPhone 18 Pro Max, 17 Pro Max, 16 Pro Max, 16 Plus, 15 Pro Max, 15 Plus, and 14 Pro Max — lists three accepted screenshot sizes side by side: 1260×2736, 1290×2796, or 1320×2868 pixels (any can be submitted in portrait or rotated to landscape). That isn’t Apple being vague; it’s because those are each device generation’s own literal native screenshot resolution, and the page accepts whichever one your screenshot actually came from rather than forcing every device in that class onto one artificial number. A screenshot captured at a size that isn’t one of a class’s listed options — even a size that looks close, or that would have been correct for last year’s phone — is what triggers the error.
| Apple device class | Covers (examples) | Accepted sizes (portrait) | Required? |
|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone with Dynamic Island (medium display) | iPhone 14/15/16/17/18 Pro, 15/16/17 | 1179×2556 or 1206×2622 px | Yes — the one iPhone size every app must provide |
| iPhone with Dynamic Island (large display) | iPhone Air, 14–18 Pro Max, 15/16 Plus | 1260×2736, 1290×2796, or 1320×2868 px | No — most commonly used for marketing screenshots |
| iPad 13-inch display | iPad Pro (M4/M5), iPad Air (M2–M4) | 2064×2752 or 2048×2732 px | Yes, if the app supports iPadOS |
Google Play: a range and a ratio, not a fixed list
Google Play Console’s own help page takes the opposite approach — instead of a catalog of exact sizes to match, it sets a floor, a ceiling, and a proportion rule. Quoting it directly: “You must provide a minimum of two screenshots across different device types to publish your store listing: JPEG or 24-bit PNG (no alpha). Minimum dimension: 320px. Maximum dimension: 3840px. The maximum dimension of your screenshot can’t be more than twice as long as the minimum dimension.” A 1080×1920px screenshot (the standard 9:16 phone ratio) clears that rule easily at a 1.78× ratio, while a 1000×2200px screenshot fails it outright at 2.2× — exactly the kind of ratio worth checking with a calculator before uploading, since nothing about either number looks obviously wrong on its own. Google’s page adds an optional tier on top: to be eligible for the large-format “recommended app” placements, “you must provide at least four screenshots with minimum 1080px resolution” — 16:9 at a minimum of 1920×1080 for landscape, or 9:16 at a minimum of 1080×1920 for portrait.
The feature graphic neither store makes optional
Separate from screenshots, Google Play requires one more image to publish at all: the feature graphic, which Google’s help page specifies as “JPEG or 24-bit PNG (no alpha)” at exactly “1024px by 500px” — no range, no alternate sizes, one fixed banner that Google displays above your screenshots and, for apps, in large-format collections alongside ads for other apps. There is no equivalent single fixed-size requirement on the Apple side; App Store Connect’s closest analog, the optional App Preview video’s poster frame, is pulled from the video itself rather than uploaded as a standalone asset.
The numbers side by side
| Requirement | Apple App Store | Google Play |
|---|---|---|
| File format | .jpeg, .jpg, or .png | JPEG or 24-bit PNG |
| Alpha / transparency | Not allowed | Not allowed (“no alpha”) |
| Screenshot count | 1–10 per device size | At least 2 across device types to publish |
| Sizing rule | Match one exact size per device class (e.g. 1179×2556 or 1206×2622 for the one required iPhone class) | 320–3840px per side; long side ≤2× short side |
| Extra fixed-size asset | None required | Feature graphic, 1024×500px, required to publish |
Building a compliant set with nearIMG
- Crop first if the screenshot isn’t already the right shape. A direct device or simulator screenshot is usually already the exact ratio its device needs; a screen recording frame grab, a composited marketing shot with device bezels, or a screenshot taken on a different phone than the size you’re targeting usually isn’t, and that mismatch is what turns a simple resize into a stretched or off-center one.
- Resize to the exact pixel pair, not a percentage. nearIMG’s Resize tool takes literal width and height in px mode; type in one of Apple’s listed sizes for the device class you’re targeting (for example 1179×2556 for the one required iPhone size), or anything inside Google Play’s 320–3840px range that keeps the long side under double the short side.
- Convert to PNG or JPG — not WebP. nearIMG can output WebP, but neither store’s screenshot spec lists it as accepted; Apple takes .jpeg/.jpg/.png and Google Play takes JPEG or 24-bit PNG only.
- On the alpha-channel rule, JPG is the safer bet. Both stores say screenshots can’t include an alpha channel. A browser canvas — the thing nearIMG and every other on-device image tool ultimately draws into — typically still encodes its PNG output with an RGBA color type even when every pixel is fully opaque; that’s a harmless technicality for an opaque screenshot in practice, but converting to JPG instead removes the question entirely, since JPEG has no alpha channel to encode in the first place.
- Doing this in the browser matters here specifically because a pre-release screenshot often shows unshipped UI or pricing — not something to hand to a random upload-based converter site before the app itself is public.
What this doesn’t do
- nearIMG has no built-in App Store or Google Play preset the way it does for YouTube, Instagram, or LinkedIn — you type the exact width and height yourself, for whichever of Apple’s roughly ten device classes or Google’s open range you’re targeting.
- It can’t fix a rejection under Apple’s Guideline 2.3.3, which requires screenshots to “show the app in use, and not merely the title art, login page, or splash screen” — that’s a content rule, not a sizing one, and it sits inside the broader “Performance” guideline family that, per Apple’s own 2025 App Store Transparency Report, accounted for 1,354,418 of that year’s 2,093,244 total rejections — more than Legal, Design, Business, and Safety combined.
- It doesn’t know which Apple device class a given screenshot field wants. As the forum thread that opened this piece shows, App Store Connect has more than one screenshot field with more than one spec — the in-app purchase review screenshot is reported to require its own separate 640×920px size, entirely apart from the product-page specs covered here. Check which field you’re uploading to before resizing.
The short version
Apple requires exactly one iPhone screenshot size (1179×2556 or 1206×2622px, for the Dynamic Island medium-display class) and, if the app supports iPadOS, one iPad size (2064×2752 or 2048×2732px) — upload those and App Store Connect auto-scales them to every other device slot, but the pixel dimensions have to match one of the listed options for that class exactly, not just look close. Google Play instead validates a range: 320–3840px per side, with the longer side no more than double the shorter one, plus a required 1024×500px feature graphic. Crop to the right shape, Resize to the exact pixel pair, and Convert to PNG or JPG with nearIMG, entirely in the browser, before a screenshot of an unreleased app ever leaves your device.