Mac App Store Screenshot Sizes and How to Make Them (2026)

If you ship a Mac app, App Store Connect asks for screenshots — and the requirements are different from iPhone and iPad. There are fewer accepted sizes, the aspect ratio is the widescreen 16:10 rather than a tall phone ratio, and the capture workflow is a desktop one. This post lists the exact accepted sizes (verified against Apple's current specification), shows how to capture them on macOS, and is honest about the part most tools skip.

The accepted Mac App Store screenshot sizes

Apple accepts exactly four screenshot resolutions for Mac apps. All four share the same 16:10 aspect ratio — the two larger ones are simply the Retina (2×) versions of the two smaller ones:

A few rules that go with the table:

• Pick one size, stay consistent. Every screenshot in a single Mac localization must use the same dimensions. You can't mix 2560×1600 with 2880×1800 in the same set — App Store Connect treats it as one device family with one size.
• Prefer a Retina size. 2560×1600 or 2880×1800 look crisp on the modern Retina displays most shoppers browse the store on. A 1280×800 upload renders soft when scaled up. Apple lists all four as valid, but the higher-resolution pair is the practical choice.
• 1 to 10 screenshots. You must provide at least one and may provide up to ten per localization.
• PNG or JPEG. Apple accepts .png, .jpg, and .jpeg. PNG is the safe default for UI screenshots — no compression artifacts on text and sharp edges.

Source: Apple's Screenshot specifications (App Store Connect Help). Apple occasionally revises these tables — if you're reading this long after the 2026 publish date, confirm the numbers there before you submit.

Why 16:10 and not your actual window size

A Mac window is whatever size you dragged it to — it is almost never exactly 16:10. The store, though, only accepts those four fixed dimensions. So the capture and the final screenshot are two different things: you capture the window at whatever resolution it happens to be, then you compose it onto a 16:10 canvas (1280×800 → 2880×1800) for upload.

That distinction matters because it's where people get stuck. They screenshot a window, the PNG comes out at, say, 1920×1180, App Store Connect rejects it for wrong dimensions, and there's no obvious next step. The fix is always the same: don't upload the raw capture — place it on a correctly-sized canvas.

How to capture a window on macOS

macOS has good built-in screenshot tools. Two are worth knowing for App Store work.

Cmd-Shift-4, then Space (the window grab)

1. Press Cmd-Shift-4. The cursor turns into a crosshair.
2. Press the Space bar. The crosshair becomes a camera icon and the window under it highlights.
3. Click the window. macOS captures just that window — at the display's native resolution, with the rounded corners and (by default) the drop shadow.

Hold Option while you click to drop the drop shadow — usually what you want, because you'll add your own frame in the composition step and the macOS shadow would double up. The file lands on your desktop as a PNG by default.

The screencapture CLI (scriptable, exact)

For repeatable captures — same window, same settings, every release — the command-line tool is more reliable than clicking:

• screencapture -o -w shot.png — interactive window capture, shadow omitted (-o), saved straight to a file.
• screencapture -R 0,0,1440,900 shot.png — capture an exact rectangle, so the output dimensions are known up front.
• screencapture -t png shot.png — force PNG output explicitly.

The CLI is the route to take if you're capturing across multiple app states or want the capture step in a script. man screencapture lists every flag.

Retina and resolution: the part that trips people up

On a Retina Mac, a screen capture is taken at the physical pixel resolution — which is double the logical points. A window that looks like it occupies 1440×900 points on a Retina display captures as a 2880×1800-pixel PNG. That is excellent news: it means a clean capture from a modern MacBook can land at one of the accepted Retina sizes with no upscaling.

Two consequences:

• Capture on a Retina display if you can. The pixels are real, not interpolated. A 1× capture blown up to 2× is soft; a native 2× capture is sharp.
• Never upscale a small capture to hit a big size. If your only capture is 1280×800 and you stretch it to 2560×1600, the text fuzzes and Apple's reviewers (and shoppers) can see it. Re-capture at the higher resolution instead.

Framing in a Mac / desktop frame

A raw window screenshot on a white canvas reads as flat. Putting the capture inside a Mac frame — a MacBook, an iMac, or a clean desktop browser/window chrome — does two useful things: it signals "this is a Mac app" at a glance in search results, and it gives you a background you can use for a caption and a color field.

The composition is the same as for any store screenshot: the framed app sits on a 16:10 canvas at one of the four accepted sizes, with a short caption and a background that doesn't fight the UI. The constraint that's specific to Mac is the aspect ratio — your whole layout has to live inside 16:10, which is wider and shorter than the phone canvases you may be used to.

The gap: most screenshot tools ignore the Mac

Here's the honest part. The large majority of App Store screenshot tools are built around iPhone and iPad. They ship phone and tablet frames, phone-shaped canvases, phone presets — and stop there. When you go looking for a MacBook frame at 2880×1800, a lot of tools simply don't have one, or they bury Mac support behind a "desktop" option that outputs the wrong aspect ratio.

The result is that Mac developers often fall back to a generic design app (Figma, Sketch, Photoshop), build a 16:10 artboard by hand, hunt down a MacBook mockup, and assemble the whole thing manually. It works, but it's slower and it's easy to get the export dimensions wrong — which is exactly the rejection you're trying to avoid.

Composing Mac screenshots in Mokbi

Mokbi supports Mac frames, so you can do the composition step in the browser instead of a generic design tool. You drop in your window capture, place it in a Mac/desktop frame, add a caption, and export at one of the four accepted 16:10 sizes — the canvas is already the right shape, so you don't hand-build a 2880×1800 artboard or risk an off-spec export. Designing is free with a watermarked preview; the final, watermark-free export is a one-time purchase (Single €9.99 / Pro €29.99). It doesn't capture the macOS window for you — that part is still Cmd-Shift-4 or screencapture — and it won't invent a Mac UI you don't have. It handles the framing, the captions, the localization, and the correctly-sized export.

The short version

1. Pick one accepted size. 2560×1600 or 2880×1800 if you want it crisp on Retina. All four are 16:10.
2. Capture the window on macOS. Cmd-Shift-4 then Space, or screencapture for scriptable, exact grabs. Capture on a Retina display so the pixels are real.
3. Frame and compose. Put the capture in a Mac frame on a 16:10 canvas, add a caption, keep the same size across the whole set.
4. Export at the accepted dimension and upload 1–10 per localization. PNG is the safe format.

For the full cross-platform size reference and the broader submission rules, the two guides below cover everything beyond the Mac-specific case.

What to read next

• Every App Store screenshot size, by device
• App Store screenshot requirements, in full
• Designing App Store screenshots without Photoshop
• Screenshot rejections and how to avoid them

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