What Top App Listings Get Right About Screenshots (And What Most Get Wrong)
We went through dozens of top App Store and Play Store listings to see what patterns their screenshots follow. The playbook is narrower than you'd think.
We recently spent time going through top-ranked apps across the App Store and Play Store — not a formal study, just a close look at what the best listings actually do with their first few screenshot frames. Some patterns jumped out.
Most top apps don't show their app in screenshot one
This one surprised us. The majority of top listings lead with a benefit-first headline paired with either a partial UI peek or a stylized illustration — not a full-screen product shot.
The apps that did lead with a raw product screenshot tended to be utility apps (calculators, weather, flashlights) where the UI is the value proposition. For anything that requires explanation — fitness, fintech, social, productivity — the first frame was almost always a marketing frame.
If you're putting a full-screen capture of your home screen as screenshot one, it's probably worth testing a benefit-led alternative.
Keep your first-frame headline short
We kept noticing that top-performing listings used surprisingly short headlines on frame one. Four to five words, not eight or twelve.
"Budget in seconds." "Sleep starts here." "Your gym, anywhere."
It makes sense when you think about it: most people first see your screenshots as thumbnails in search results on a 6-inch screen. A 12-word headline becomes unreadable at that size. Open your own listing on your phone and squint — if you can't read the headline, it's too long.
The first three frames do most of the work
Every listing gets up to 10 screenshot slots. But most users only swipe through the first few. Frames 4-10 exist for the comparison shoppers who are seriously evaluating you against competitors.
The pattern we kept seeing in top listings:
Frame 1: What is this app and why should I care? (benefit headline + mood-setting visual)
Frame 2: Show me the thing. (the core feature in action — the screen users will spend most of their time on)
Frame 3: Prove it. (social proof, data, a second strong feature, or a trust signal)
If your listing doesn't have a clear answer to "why should I install this?" within the first three frames, the remaining seven won't save you.
Device frames depend on your category
Whether to use device mockups isn't a universal rule — it depends on what your audience expects.
Looking across categories, we noticed:
- Finance and health apps lean heavily toward device frames. Trust matters. A phone mockup signals "this is a real, polished product."
- Games almost never use device frames. Gameplay screenshots and video previews dominate.
- Productivity apps frequently use frames. Users want to see the UI clearly before committing.
- Social and messaging apps are a mix. Some go for a raw, authentic vibe.
The takeaway: look at the top 10 apps in your specific category and match the visual language your potential users are already calibrated to. Don't blindly follow general advice (including ours).
What the weakest listings had in common
We also looked at listings that ranked poorly despite having decent ratings, to see what they got wrong:
- Feature laundry lists. Trying to mention six features across three frames instead of selling one experience. Pick one thing and make it unmissable.
- Inconsistent styling. Different fonts, colors, or mockup styles between frames. It signals "we made these in a rush."
- Settings or preferences screens. Nobody downloads an app for its settings page. Show outcomes, not configuration.
- Tiny text over busy UI. If you're overlaying a headline on a screenshot, you need a solid color bar or gradient overlay. Most apps that tried text-on-UI without proper contrast failed the squint test.
- Landscape orientation for portrait apps. Unless your app is genuinely used in landscape (games, video editors), portrait is what users expect to see.
A practical screenshot strategy
If we were launching an app today:
- First frame: Benefit headline (4-5 words max), partial UI peek or illustration. Use the full width for the message — no device frame on frame one.
- Frame two: Core feature in a device frame. Clean background, one-line subtitle.
- Frame three: Social proof or a "wow" secondary feature. Something that builds trust or creates FOMO.
- Frames 4-5: Supporting features with consistent visual style.
- Design at the largest required size first (currently 1320 x 2868 for iPhone 16 Pro Max), then scale down. Export a 1080 x 1920 variant for Google Play. Our screenshot size guide has the full reference.
- Test two variants in the first month — different headline copy on frame one, same everything else. Both Apple's Custom Product Pages and Google Play's Store Listing Experiments support this.
We built SnapMonk to make this workflow faster — designing once and exporting to multiple device sizes without the Figma resize-and-re-export loop. But the thinking matters more than the tool.
The real bottleneck isn't design
Most app screenshot sets are mediocre not because the design is bad, but because teams treat screenshots as a checkbox ("we need five images, let's capture some screens and add text") instead of as the conversion lever they actually are.
Your screenshots are effectively a landing page. The apps that convert well spend disproportionate time on their first three frames, test headline variants, and design for the thumbnail — not the full-screen view.
If you want to go deeper on the conversion side, our ASO optimization guide covers sequencing and testing strategy in more detail. And if you're also working on your Play Store listing, the Google Play screenshot size guide will save you from uploading the wrong dimensions.
Related: The Screenshot Mistakes That Killed Our Install Rate — a walkthrough of common screenshot problems and how to diagnose them on your own listing.