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What's the easiest way to get screenshots for app submission to Apple's App Store, and what are the various sizes that need to be included?
Also, is the status bar allowed? I believe I've heard it's not, but a ton of apps including Facebook and Quora include the status bar in their screenshots.
Let's start off with saying that the status bar is allowed in the screenshots, however not encouraged and in Apple's Guide it says that it shouldn't be included.
As to your second question, there are a few methods. Firstly, you have to have a screenshot for the current major screen sizes: 5.5", 6.5".If you have an iPad version, then 12.9" iPad is also required. How to make good screenshots:
Method 1:
Use your own devices. If you in any case have enough devices lying around at home or from friends, you can use them to take screenshots. You can either manually press home and power button at the same time, or my preferred method, connect your device to your computer. In Xcode open device manager by clicking CMD + SHIFTt + 2. Select your device, and in the detailed view you'll see the screenshot button.
. This is rather tedious and takes a lot of time.
EDIT 2020
As correctly pointed out by The Trav, Launchkit was aqquired by Google, and is now available as open source code. There are alternatives a simple google search will reveal.
Method 2 - DEPRECATED:
Use a website to create your screenshots. This is my number one favourite, as it only requires one screenshot and then creates beautiful App Store images. I am in no way affiliated with them.It's a service from Launch Kit called Screenshot builder. You can make beautiful images, as seen in their example below. Launch Kit Screenshot Builder
Method 3:
Lastly, you can create them yourself for every device size yourself in Photoshop or any other editing software you have.
For that you need the following specifications:
72 dpi, RGB, flattened, no transparency
High-quality JPEG or PNG image file format
6.5": 1 1284 x 2778 pixels portrait || 2778 x 1284 pixels landscape
5.5": 1242 x 2208 pixels portrait || 2208 x 1242 pixels landscape
12.9" iPad: 2048 x 2732 pixels portrait || 2732 x 2048 pixels landscape
All of the info for the last method can also be found in Apple's Guidelines.
The easiest way is to use a tool like Screenshop - Screenshot Creator. Its a tool for macOS, which helps to create nice screenshots for the App Store very easily.
Predefined screenshot sizes can be chosen for iPhone, iPad, Mac in portrait or landscape mode. Its also useful for Android screenshots or web presentations.
There is also a free test Version available.
I've created very nice screenshots within minutes with the tool, after spending hours and getting frustrated by using image editors before.
Here is the website for the tool: http://screenshop.zidarts.com
Which includes a demo video.
And here is the direct link to the demo video on youtube: https://youtu.be/yjiGRqTBA_4
Check out AppScreens.com
It generates all required screenshots from a single responsive scene template making the process fast!
It supports the creation of all required Apple App Store (and Google Play Store, if you also require) at once. As of 2020 these are as follows (in the highest resolution);
4" iOS Phones (iPhone 4/5/SE) # 640px x 1136px
5.5" iOS Phones (iPhone 6/7/8 & Plus) # 1242px x 2208px
6.5" iOS Phones (iPhone X/XS/XR/11) # 1242px x 2688px
12.9" iOS iPad (iPad 2nd gen & above) # 2048px x 2732px
6.28" Android One Plus # 1140px x 2280px
6.3" Android Pixel 3 # 1080px x 2160px
7" Android Tablet # 1200px x 1600px
10" Android Tablet # 1600px x 2133px
AppScreens is the most fully featured and smartest screenshot tool on web. It supports automatic panoramic backgrounds, 3D warped devices, offers 25+ templates, saving and reloading of projects, etc.
It also includes all of the essential design frills such as rich text, 950+ fonts, hundreds of device & colour combos, real-time refreshing, high resolution downloads, etc. Oh, and it is free to try!
Note, shameless plug: I am the developer. We've built this to assist in the creation of these assets for our own apps. We've wasted too much time over the years battling with image editors & other tools.
Updated 2020.
For iPhone, screenshots for 6.5-inch iPhone Xs Max and 5.5-inch devices (iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8 Plus) are required. These screenshots will scale down for smaller device sizes.
For iPad, screenshots for 12.9-inch iPad Pro (2nd generation) and 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation) are required. These screenshots will scale down for smaller device sizes.
Apple link.
How about using the Xcode Simulator it self, This would get you the correct resolution with no pain, Just put your app on the desired simulator and save screen by clicking CMD+S will export a screenshot on your desktop with the exact desired resolution.
Here I try it with iPhone 11 Pro Max Simulator (I'm using Xcode 12 on a Big Sur)
Try https://previewed.app/
You can create beautiful screenshots, with AppStore approved dimensions in a few clicks.
In the end you end up with something like:
Update 2022:
Recently saw ads and tried using Screenshots Pro
Reasons to switch:
Free
Localization
Auto export to multiple devices (iPhone 4", 5.5" and 6.5" devices for example, same for iPad)
API access (Haven't tested, but you can integrate something like Fast Lane to create screenshots and then use them in Screenshots Pro for post-processing)
Recently things have changed. Now you only need two sets of screenshots : 5.5" and 12.9 " screenshots.
Another easy way to create screenshots for free: https://screenshots.us/
I use the InstaMocks app. It's free and has a ton of built in Android and iOS devices. I've been using it for app store images and to promote my app, FitJo, on Instagram and it's saved me a ton of time.
It also has material colors built, a color picker, and the option to add images as the background.
I have built an NPM tool called app-g-screenshots which will take input pictures and output them for the required sizes locally on your computer.
Please check it out here:
App Generate Screenshots
If you don't use NPM I also built a web version which can be found on this Github
Repository
Related
I have my existing application, I want to migrate these application to iPhone 5 resolution as well, I tried lot of links regarding these problem, I haven't get clear idea about actually to migrate the application, Please give the idea, regarding these problem.
I referred following link as well but haven't get clear idea about these problem....
How to develop or migrate apps for iPhone 5 screen resolution?
From above link I done with splash screen, but the remaining nib ui height not proper, in some screen, above will get more space and in some below space is more, SO how to solve these prob, please help me.
Are you going to support iOS 5 or earlier? If not, I recommend learning about Autolayout. With this feature, you can set up constraints that will ensure layouts between the devices appear similar (with just a little more room for your views).
First, read this to learn about the recommended usability recommendations for different devices (scroll down to the "Running on iPhone 5" section): http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/TranslateApp/TranslateApp.html
Then, for Autolayout check out this WWDC video:
Introduction to Auto Layout for iOS and OS X
I have a graphic designer who is doing some graphics for my iPhone app. Most recently she made me a background pattern and posed me two questions that I'm unsure of how to answer:
1) What should the size of the background pattern be?
-For this I know that when I'm programming my app,the screen is in terms of 320 by 480 (when in portrait mode), however is this the appropriate unit that I should give her (I'm only worried about iPhone 4 and below for now)? Like for instance, I know there is a retina display and I've seen the phone resolution of my phone also be listed as 640 x 960. I'm just confused of what the best thing to tell her regarding this is, she does not have any iPhone experience and will be using the traditional graphic programs like illustrator, photo shop etc to do the graphic design.
2) What file type should it be?
-I've read the iPhone supports mostly all of the most popular graphic file types, but is there anyone particular that would work best on an iPhone app?
The standard for iPhone resource images is PNG. If you want to target iPhone 4+ with retina display, have the designer provide two versions of the PNG: A standard version and a double-sized version which should have #2x appended after the filename, but before the extension.
So
image.png
for regular resolution and
image#2x.png
for retina resolution. iOS will automatically pick the best one to use based on the screen available.
I'm looking at the iPhone 5 specs, and see that the screen resolution is 640x1132 or so, which would break some of my manual+storyboard interface layouts. I'm wandering how to make an app so it would either show on iPhone 5 in 640x960 screen (with black bars), or exclude my app from sale to iPhone 5 at all, as I do not want to worry about the interface breaking. Is this possible for existing apps?
Thank you for your input!
Unless you include a Default-568h#2x.png image in your application, it will not run at full iPhone 5 resolution.
In the Apple keynote on the 12th Sept 2012, they said all current applications in the app store would run on the iPhone 5 with without a problem using the black letterbox at the top and bottom.
The way to remove the letterbox is by providing a Default-568h#2x.png image, like duskwuff mentioned. If its not there, the device will run the application will run at 640x960.
Apple recommends cropping out the status bar from screenshots submitted to the app store. Doing this manually in Preview is a very tedious and error-prone process.
Do any developers have any best-practices recommendations or automated techniques for speeding up this process? The goal would be to take as input iPad and/or iPhone screenshots, and output them with the toolbar cropped off. We need to support both portrait and landscape orientation, and Retina-resolution iPhone screens.
I've found a few utilities online that purport to help with this, but the ones I have found seem to fail on Retina-display resolution screens. And another that works via the iOS Simulator requires a 1920x1080 resolution monitor to process iPad screenshots - making it useless for non-17" laptop-based developers.
Any other recommendations for taking good screenshots for the AppStore? I know (based on my searching) that there are a lot of other developers who would be interested in a quicker workflow to handle this.
Bonus points for being able to bulk-process an entire directory.
I developed a free App, Status Barred which is on the Mac App Store. It crops your iOS screenshots from iPhone, iPad, portrait, landscape, normal & retina display.
I used the ImageMagick command line tools to batch crop all the Screenshot png files, but haven't figured out how to not use auto assigned output filenames.
convert Screenshot*.png -crop 640x920+0+40 920Screenshot.png
Here are two ways, assuming you mean status bar and not toolbar (which you probably shouldn't crop out of the screenshots).
If you have photoshop, just change the canvas size by subtracting 20 (low-res) or 40 (retina) and anchoring the bottom of the image. This works perfectly.
It's also easy in iPhoto using the Edit/Crop feature. Set the dimensions to the correct size (Portrait: 320x460 or 640x920 and Landscape: 480x300 or 960x600) and move the crop screen to the bottom of the image. This does it perfectly as well.
After much searching, the easiest tool I have found is the iOS Simulator Cropper. It does a great job of handling different resolutions and orientations, and it is painless to use. No need to muck around with Photoshop or other slow / cumbersome tools.
Link: http://www.curioustimes.de/iphonesimulatorcropper/index.html
The developer reports that they have enhanced the iOS Simulator Cropper to bulk process screenshots taken on device as well as via the Simulator. I haven't tried this yet since the update, but if it works well this will be the perfect solution.
I have also found a very useful tool in the Mac App store called "Status Barred" that also very simply crops the status bar out of any images handed to it.
How about just using Preview? Command+A to select all, drag the selection down to 920px then Tools => Crop.
For example, preparing a launch screen of 320 x 480 would have to be changed....
How is that going to work for us? Are programmers always going to have to be submitting a high-res that will be scaled down for old devices such as the iphone 3g?
The size of the screen is basically 4 times on a pixel by pixel basis. So each pixel of your image for example gets boosted to 4.
What this means for you? You don't have to change your App, your app will scale to the hi res screen for you, same with your UI and images within your UI. Of course if you want to take advantage of the better screen quality you will have to submit hi res images.
I haven't looked at going the other way but I believe it would be a similar case.
One exception to this is text. It automatically scales to the higher res for you for free. So text will look super sharp. One problem with this is if your loading image has text based on the original load screen that wouldn't look the same as when the high res text loads.
Strictly speaking, anyone who's seen the documentation on how they're handling this is still under non-disclosure until Monday, when the new iOS ships.
Suffice to say, it's clever. You'll be able to put both high and low-rez versions of ALL your images into your app, and then load them into your app in a way that's totally transparent from the code side. The device will make its own call about which version of the image is appropriate for the kind of screen it's got.
Now that the WWDC 2010 videos are available for free to any registered iPhone developer (or ADC member), I recommend watching Session 134: Optimize your iPhone App for the Retina Display for a full description of what you need to do to support the iPhone 4's new display.