Panoramic App Store Screenshot Dimensions: The Gap Trap

A panoramic App Store screenshot set has no special dimensions of its own. Each card ships at the exact size Apple already requires for that device, 1260 x 2736 px for a 6.9-inch iPhone, and the "panorama" is one wide image sliced into those standard cards [1]. The real work isn't the pixels. It's the canvas math and the gap the store leaves between every card.

That gap is where most sets fall apart. A panorama designed as one seamless image and then chopped into pieces looks continuous in your design tool and broken on the actual product page, because the App Store never shows your screenshots edge to edge.

TL;DR:

• A panorama slice is just a normal per-device screenshot. iPhone 6.9-inch is 1260 x 2736 px portrait; iPad 13-inch is 2064 x 2752 px [1]. You upload the slices, not the wide canvas.
• Canvas width = one frame's width times the number of frames. A 6-card iPhone 16 Pro Max panorama is a 7,560 x 2,736 px canvas cut into six 1260 x 2736 cards.
• The App Store renders each screenshot as its own rounded card with space between them. Apple has never published that gap size, and a developer request for the exact value sits unanswered on Apple's own forums [3]. Design around it; never split a word, face, or logo on a seam.
• Different device classes have different aspect ratios, so one canvas can't be reused. Each device needs its own panorama render.

If you're still deciding whether a panorama is even the right call, the companion post on whether panoramic sets convert covers that trade-off. This one is about building the set to spec once you've committed.

Table of contents

• What are the dimensions of a panoramic App Store screenshot?
• How do you slice a panorama into App Store cards?
• What is the gap between App Store screenshots?
• Why does each device need its own panorama?
• How many screenshots should a panorama span?
• Panoramic dimensions: App Store vs Google Play
• How to get the dimensions right

What are the dimensions of a panoramic App Store screenshot?

Each slice uses the standard per-device screenshot size. A panorama doesn't get a wide-format upload slot: you submit individual screenshots at the exact pixel dimensions Apple lists for the device, and the continuity is an illusion created across separate cards. The 6.9-inch iPhone slice is 1260 x 2736 px portrait, the same as any non-panoramic screenshot for that device [1].

So there's no "panoramic dimension" to look up. There's the device dimension, and then a decision about how many of those cards you spread one scene across. Here are the sizes that matter most for indie apps, straight from Apple's screenshot specifications [1]:

Upload one 6.9-inch iPhone set and one iPad set and you cover the two required device families for most App Store listings. The device dimensions reference has the full table if you support older sizes, and the App Store screenshot size guide walks through which sizes are required versus optional.

How do you slice a panorama into App Store cards?

You design one wide canvas, then cut it into device-width columns. The canvas width is a single frame's width multiplied by the number of frames, and the height stays at the device's screenshot height. Slice at exact frame-width intervals, export each column as its own image, and upload the columns in order. The store reassembles the sequence visually.

The math is the part people get wrong, so make it explicit. For a 6-card panorama on a 6.9-inch iPhone, each frame is 1260 px wide, so the full canvas is 6 x 1260 = 7,560 px wide by 2,736 px tall. Cut that into six 1260 x 2736 columns and you have your upload set. The same logic scales to any device:

• iPhone 16 Pro Max, 6 frames: 7,560 x 2,736 px canvas, sliced into six 1260 x 2736 cards.
• iPad Pro 13-inch, 6 frames: 12,384 x 2,752 px canvas, sliced into six 2064 x 2752 cards.
• Apple Watch Ultra 2, 6 frames: 2,460 x 502 px canvas, sliced into six 410 x 502 cards.

One rule that saves an upload rejection: submit the slices, never the wide canvas. Apple accepts one to ten individual screenshots per localization in .jpeg, .jpg, or .png [1]. A 7,560 px master image isn't a valid screenshot; the six 1260-wide columns are.

What is the gap between App Store screenshots?

The store puts visible space between every screenshot, and Apple doesn't publish how much. Open any listing: the screenshots render as separate rounded cards with a strip of background showing between them, and swiping moves one card at a time. A continuous scene doesn't flow across that space. It stops at the right edge of one card and restarts at the left edge of the next.

This is the trap that breaks naive panoramas. If you design a seamless image and slice it on a grid, anything that crosses a slice boundary, a headline word, a device frame, a person's face, gets split by the gap and reads as a mistake rather than a scene. The fix is to treat each seam as a hard cut and keep important elements away from it. Let the background flow across the gaps (a sky, a gradient, a landscape survive being interrupted), and center your headlines and devices safely inside each card.

There's no exact number to design to, and that's deliberate on Apple's part. A developer asking for the precise artboard gap across iPhone and iPad sizes got no answer on Apple's own developer forums [3], and the value isn't in the screenshot specifications either. Because you can't pin the gap, design as if it could be wide: nothing load-bearing near a seam, background only.

[VISUAL: side-by-side of the same 3-card panorama. Left: a headline and a device frame straddling the two seams, each split by a gray gap, labeled "breaks at the gap." Right: background gradient flowing across the seams with headline and device centered inside each card, labeled "survives the gap."]

Why does each device need its own panorama?

Because the aspect ratios differ, so one canvas can't be reused. A 6.9-inch iPhone frame is 1260 x 2736 (roughly 0.46:1), while an iPad Pro 13-inch frame is 2064 x 2752 (roughly 0.75:1). An iPhone panorama stretched to iPad width would distort the scene or crop it, and the slice boundaries would land in the wrong places. Each device family is a separate design pass.

That's the cost people underestimate. Supporting iPhone and iPad means designing and slicing two panoramas, not resizing one, because the wider iPad cards change how much of the scene fits in each frame and where the seams fall. The scene has to be re-composed so that frame one still carries a standalone hook at the new proportions. If you're spreading a panorama across the first three frames, where most of the conversion happens, that re-composition matters more than anywhere else in the set.

How many screenshots should a panorama span?

Fewer than the platform maximum. Apple allows one to ten screenshots per localization and Google Play allows up to eight, but spanning all of them is a mistake [1][2]. The store shows only the opening frames before a tap, and most users never swipe to the end, so a payoff that only resolves on card eight is invisible to almost everyone.

A practical range is three to six frames, with frame one designed to sell on its own. That keeps the scene readable in the search preview and leaves room for single-purpose cards later in the set. The platform ceiling is a hard limit, not a target: you can slice a ten-frame panorama, but you're betting your whole message on swipes that mostly don't happen. The layout patterns guide covers which arrangements survive being seen one card at a time, and the conversion trade-off of long panoramas is the whole subject of the do-they-convert companion post.

Panoramic dimensions: App Store vs Google Play

The slice sizes and frame counts differ, so a cross-platform panorama needs two builds. Apple takes up to ten screenshots at fixed per-device pixel dimensions [1]. Google Play takes up to eight, requires at least two, and works from aspect ratios and dimension bounds rather than fixed sizes: 320 px minimum, 3840 px maximum, and the longest side can't be more than twice the shortest [2].

That last Play rule is the one to watch when slicing. A normal 9:16 phone slice (say 1080 x 1920) stays well inside the 2:1 bound, so individual columns are always compliant, but a very wide single slice would violate it. Upload the columns, never the panorama master, on both stores. Here's how the two platforms line up for panorama planning:

Because the frame counts and slice dimensions don't match, a scene composed for a six-card iPhone set won't map cleanly onto Google Play. Plan the two panoramas separately, then check each column against its platform's rules before upload.

How to get the dimensions right

Slice to per-device spec, keep content off the seams, and build one panorama per device family. The dimensions themselves are simple once you stop thinking about a "panoramic size" and start thinking about standard device cards spread across a wide canvas. The gap and the per-device re-composition are what separate a set that flows from one that looks chopped.

Run this before you export:

• Confirm the slice size. Each column matches the device's exact screenshot dimensions (1260 x 2736 for 6.9-inch iPhone), not the wide canvas [1].
• Check the canvas math. Frame width times frame count equals canvas width. Six iPhone frames is 7,560 px wide.
• Clear the seams. No headline, device, face, or logo crosses a slice boundary. Background only across the gaps.
• Re-compose per device. iPhone and iPad get separate panoramas because their aspect ratios differ.
• Cap the span. Three to six frames, frame one standalone. Don't spread the payoff to card ten.

Getting the slices pixel-aligned by hand is fiddly, which is where doing it in a builder helps: describe the scene and the screenshot builder generates the wide background and cuts it into correctly-dimensioned per-device cards, so the canvas math and the slice boundaries are handled for you. Start from the panoramic overview to see the format in action, then keep the seam rule in mind and your continuous scene will actually read as one.