Mac App Store screenshots must be 1280x800, 1440x900, 2560x1600 or 2880x1800 pixels, in RGB, with no transparency and no alpha channel. You can upload up to ten per app. The most common rejection is a screenshot showing the macOS desktop, another app, or a window with a drop shadow that makes the dimensions wrong. Capture the window only and scale to an accepted size exactly.
What sizes does the Mac App Store accept?
Mac listings get treated as an afterthought by teams who ship iOS first, and it shows. I've looked through a lot of Mac listings and a striking number have screenshots that were clearly captured on a whim, desktop wallpaper and all.
The spec is short, which is good news. There are four accepted resolutions and they're all 16:10, matching the aspect ratio of Apple's own displays.
The two smaller sizes, 1280x800 and 1440x900, are the standard-density options. The two larger ones, 2560x1600 and 2880x1800, are the Retina equivalents at exactly double the pixel dimensions.
Use the Retina sizes. There is no reason not to, and a standard-density screenshot displayed on a Retina screen looks noticeably soft next to competitors who did it properly. Apple's screenshot specifications reference is the authoritative list and worth bookmarking, since these tables do get revised.
Format is PNG or JPEG, RGB colour, flattened. No alpha channel, no transparency, no 16-bit anything.
One thing worth knowing before you start: unlike iOS, where you can often supply one size and let Apple derive the rest, Mac expects you to hit an accepted resolution exactly. There's no tolerance for being twelve pixels off, and being twelve pixels off is exactly what happens when a window capture picks up a shadow. That's why the capture technique below matters more here than on any other platform.
Why do Mac screenshots get rejected?
Showing the desktop. If your screenshot includes the macOS wallpaper, the Dock, or the menu bar with someone's actual menu extras in it, that's grounds for rejection. Reviewers want your app, not your machine.
Showing another app. A window from Finder, a browser, or worse a competitor's product, sitting behind yours. Easy to do accidentally when you screenshot a window with transparency behind it.
Wrong dimensions from drop shadows. This is the one that gets everyone. The standard macOS window capture shortcut includes the window's drop shadow, which adds transparent padding around the window. That changes the pixel dimensions, adds an alpha channel, and produces an image that is neither an accepted size nor free of transparency. Two violations from one keystroke.
Placeholder or lorem content. Real looking data is expected. Screenshots full of "Test User 1" and "asdf" read as an unfinished product.
Marketing material rather than the app. Mac listings are more conservative than iOS about heavily designed screenshots. Some stylisation is fine, but a screenshot that's mostly graphic design with a small app window in the corner risks a conversation with review.
I'd treat that last one as a spectrum rather than a rule. Framed, captioned screenshots are common and accepted. Screenshots where the app is barely visible are the risk.
How do you capture a clean window?
Press Command Shift 4, then Space to switch to window capture mode, then hold Option while clicking the window. Holding Option removes the drop shadow, giving you a clean rectangular capture with no transparent padding and no alpha channel.
That single habit eliminates the most common Mac screenshot rejection.
A few more capture habits worth building:
Create a clean user account on your Mac purely for screenshots. Default wallpaper, empty Dock, no menu bar extras, no notifications. Switching to it takes seconds and it removes an entire category of accidental leakage, including any chance of your own email address or file names appearing in a public listing.
Turn on Do Not Disturb before capturing. A notification banner appearing mid-capture has ruined more screenshot sessions than anything else.
Populate your app with realistic demo data before you start, not after. Retaking screenshots because the data looked fake is the most annoying kind of rework.
Name the files as you go, too. Ten screenshots called Screenshot 2026-08-01 at 14.32.11 are indistinguishable an hour later, and reordering a listing becomes guesswork. I've renamed a batch three times because I couldn't tell which capture was which, which is a stupid way to lose twenty minutes.
One more thing specific to Apple silicon Macs: if your app has a different appearance under Rosetta or on Intel hardware, screenshot on the architecture most of your users are actually on. It sounds obvious and it's caught teams whose build machine was the odd one out.
Once you have clean captures, framing them consistently is the part worth automating. The device frame library covers desktop and laptop frames, and dropping the same capture into a consistent frame across all ten screenshots is what makes a listing look considered rather than assembled.
The Retina scaling trap
On a Retina Mac, a window that measures 1280 points wide captures at 2560 pixels. Good. That's your Retina asset and it matches an accepted size.
The trap is scaling. If you capture at 2560x1600 and then scale down to 1440x900 to hit a different accepted size, you've resampled and softened everything, particularly text. Text is the least forgiving thing to resample, and app screenshots are mostly text.
The right approach is to capture natively at the size you intend to ship. If you want 2880x1800, set your display scaling so the window captures at that size, rather than capturing something else and resizing.
If you must resize, always go down from a larger native capture, never up from a smaller one. Upscaling produces visibly mushy text that reviewers and users both notice.
Colour profile is the related gotcha. Modern Macs use wide-gamut displays, and a screenshot captured in Display P3 can look oversaturated or subtly shifted when the store renders it. Converting to sRGB before upload keeps the colours you designed. It takes one export setting and prevents a class of "why does this look wrong" confusion.
I've seen a listing where the brand blue rendered noticeably purple for exactly this reason, and it took a while to work out why.
How many should you upload, and in what order?
Fewer than three looks unfinished. All ten is usually padding, and padding dilutes the strong ones.
Order matters the same way it does everywhere. The first two carry almost all the weight, since the Mac App Store shows a limited number before the user has to scroll or swipe.
A structure that works for most Mac apps:
One, the main window doing the primary thing, captioned with the core benefit. Two, the second most common workflow. Three, something that differentiates you from the obvious competitor. Four and five, secondary features, integrations, or the settings depth that power users care about.
Mac users skew toward wanting to see the actual interface, more so than iOS users. Density is a feature on desktop, not a flaw. Don't hide a rich interface behind a minimal marketing shot, because the person considering a Mac utility often wants to see that it's capable.
If you're shipping the same product on iPhone and iPad as well, the sizes and rules differ for each, and the iPad screenshot requirements are their own separate spec worth reading rather than assuming. Building all three sets from one source layout in the mockup studio is considerably less painful than maintaining three design files.
Frequently asked questions
What size should Mac App Store screenshots be?
One of four accepted resolutions: 1280x800, 1440x900, 2560x1600 or 2880x1800 pixels, all at 16:10. The two larger sizes are the Retina options and you should use those, since standard-density screenshots look visibly soft on Retina displays next to competitors who uploaded properly.
Why was my Mac app screenshot rejected?
The usual causes are showing the macOS desktop, Dock or menu bar, including another application's window, or uploading a capture with a drop shadow that adds transparent padding and changes the dimensions. Placeholder data like Test User 1 also reads as an unfinished product to reviewers.
How do I capture a Mac window without the drop shadow?
Press Command Shift 4, then Space to enter window capture mode, then hold Option while clicking the window. The Option key removes the shadow, giving a clean rectangular image with no transparent padding and no alpha channel. That one habit fixes the most common rejection.
Can Mac App Store screenshots have transparency?
No. They must be RGB with no alpha channel and no transparency, flattened as PNG or JPEG. This is exactly why the default window capture causes trouble, since including the drop shadow adds an alpha channel automatically without you doing anything.
How many screenshots should a Mac app have?
Up to ten are allowed, but five or six is the sensible target. Fewer than three looks unfinished and all ten usually dilutes your strongest assets. The first two carry almost all the weight, so put the main window doing the primary task first and the second most common workflow next.
Should I resize screenshots to hit an accepted size?
Capture natively at your target size wherever possible, since resampling softens text and app screenshots are mostly text. If you must resize, scale down from a larger native capture rather than up from a smaller one, and convert to sRGB before upload so wide-gamut colours don't shift. Framing them consistently afterwards is easiest in the [mockup studio](/create).
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