App preview videos: the specs, and the number that surprises everyone

Fifteen to thirty seconds, three per set, H.264 at 10–12 Mbps — and an accepted resolution that has nothing to do with your phone's screen.

Published: 31 August 2026

The resolution is not your screen size

This is the one that costs an afternoon. A screenshot for a 6.9-inch iPhone is uploaded at 1320 × 2868. An app preview for the same phone is uploaded at 886 × 1920 in portrait, or 1920 × 886 in landscape — and the same pair is accepted for the 6.5-inch and 6.3-inch classes too.

So the instinct to record at native resolution and upload the file as-is produces a rejection, not a preview. Record at whatever gives you a clean image, then export to the accepted size.

Length, count, and the frame people actually see

Constraint	Value
Minimum length	15 seconds
Maximum length	30 seconds
Previews per set	up to 3
Maximum file size	500 MB
Default poster frame	taken at 5 seconds

The poster frame deserves more attention than it gets. Unless you set it yourself, the still that represents your video in the listing is whatever happens to be on screen five seconds in — which, in a preview that opens with a logo animation, is often the moment the logo is fading out. Set it deliberately, and set it to the frame you would have chosen as a screenshot.

Format and bitrate

Two formats are accepted: H.264 or ProRes 422 (HQ only).

• H.264 — target 10 to 12 Mbps, progressive, up to High Profile Level 4.0, 30 fps maximum. Extensions .mov, .m4v or .mp4.
• ProRes 422 HQ — variable bitrate around 220 Mbps, no external references, 30 fps maximum, .mov only.

Thirty frames per second is a ceiling, not a target. A 60 fps screen recording has to come down, and letting an export tool do it by dropping every other frame is how a smooth scroll turns into a stutter. Re-time it properly or record at 30 to begin with.

Audio, if you have any

Stereo, 256 kbps AAC, sampled at 44.1 or 48 kHz. Two arrangements are accepted: one track carrying two channels, left then right, or two tracks carrying one channel each, again left then right. Every track has to be enabled — a muted-but-present track is a common cause of a file that looks fine locally and fails on upload.

ProRes additionally accepts PCM at 16, 24 or 32 bits.

What a preview is for

The specifications are the easy half. The hard half is that a preview is watched with the sound off, in a list, by someone who has not decided to care yet. Fifteen seconds is the floor and it is usually the right answer: show the thing the app does, once, without a title card.

And whatever you record has to be true. A preview that demonstrates a feature the build does not have is the clearest possible version of a listing that does not match the app — which is the reason most rejections exist in the first place.

Source

Every figure above is from Apple's App Preview specifications page in the App Store Connect help, read on 31 August 2026. It changes; check it before a submission that has a date attached to it.