Crypto wallet app screenshots: what App Review rejects

Wallet listings fail review for reasons other categories never meet, and the images are where most of it happens. The guidelines that apply, where the line on another company's interface is drawn, the rejections that really happen and what to do when the app has no users yet.

Published: 16 September 2026 · Last reviewed: 1 November 2026

The sizes are not the interesting part

A wallet listing needs the same image dimensions as any other app, and they change when Apple changes them rather than by category. Those numbers are covered elsewhere on this site: the current sizes, which sets Apple scales for you, and what to do when the dimensions are rejected. Nothing there is wallet-specific.

Where the line is drawn, and who draws it

Strip the branding from a wallet screen and what is left is a layout, not a company: the total first at display size, the day’s change under it, the assets as rows with an icon, a name, a quantity and a value, and navigation in tabs. None of that belongs to anyone, and the anatomy of a crypto wallet screen writes down the geometry. What does belong to someone is the wordmark, the icon, the palette used as an identity and the product name.

Apple draws the line in the App Review Guidelines. Guideline 5.2.1 tells developers not to use protected third-party material such as trademarks without permission, and not to include “misleading, false, or copycat representations, names, or metadata”. Guideline 4.1(c) is narrower: another developer’s icon, brand or product name cannot appear in yours without their approval. A reviewer looking at your screenshots asks whose product they appear to show, and if the answer is anyone but you the submission has a problem, whether the image came from a screen capture, a design file or any other tool.

Nominative use is not the same thing

Naming a product to discuss it is ordinary: a review, a comparison or a news story does it every day. What is not ordinary is wearing the name to attract the traffic that belongs to it, or shipping an interface a user could mistake for the original. In your metadata, describe the category and never a competitor’s brand. “Crypto wallet” is a category, and a named wallet is somebody’s trademark.

What is specific to wallets

An image that implies a return. A portfolio screen showing growth, captioned in a way that suggests the app produced it, moves the listing from software into financial promotion. The screenshot alone is rarely the problem; the screenshot plus the caption usually is.

A balance presented as typical. Populated screens are normal. “Average user portfolio” under one is a claim, and a claim needs to be true and substantiated.

Marks you do not own. Token logos in a listing image belong to their projects. Using them to show that an app supports a chain is ordinary; using them so the listing reads as endorsed by that project is not.

The rejections that actually happen

Trademark problems are the loudest failure but not the most frequent. In practice the same handful recur, and most are mechanical:

• A visible third-party mark. A logo, wordmark or product name inside the screen, including in a token row, which is where people forget to look.
• A screen that is not the app. Guideline 2.3.3 says screenshots should show the app in use, and not merely the title art, login page or splash screen. A marketing poster with a phone drawn on it does not qualify.
• Metadata that promises more than the build does. Guideline 2.3.1(a) covers marketing an app in a misleading way, such as promoting content or services it does not actually offer. A screenshot showing a feature that is not in the submitted binary falls inside it.
• Format faults. An alpha channel, a device frame baked into the image, or dimensions that do not match a declared display class. These are the most common of all and the easiest to prevent; the numbers are in why App Store screenshots get rejected.

The empty-listing problem

Every wallet ships before it has users, and an empty portfolio screen makes a terrible first image. Composing a populated one is the normal answer: what Apple asks is that the images represent the app accurately, not that the data be somebody’s. There is a general piece on this in making screenshots before you have users. Before the build can show one, use a populated wallet screen for the deck and the concept test; the listing itself shows your build.

What to do instead

Draw your own screen using the conventions, put your own name and mark on it, and populate it with data you invented. You end up with something you can submit, defend and reuse, and you can produce twenty variants, which a device capture of an empty app cannot give you.

Compose the screens first, at native resolution, with the values you can defend. Write the captions second, and read each one as though it were a sentence someone will hold you to, because in this category it is. Then check the sizes, which is the only part with a definite right answer. If the image is destined for a deck instead of a listing, the constraints change and showing a crypto portfolio in a pitch deck takes it from there.

And the plain version of the rule this whole page circles: a mockup is honest when the viewer knows what they are looking at, and it is a prop, never proof. Presenting one as evidence of holdings is not a review problem. It is a different problem (where fake data in a demo is normal and where it becomes fraud).

Not affiliated with Apple: its guidelines are quoted here as published.

Sources

• Apple, App Review Guidelines (2.3.1, 2.3.3, 4.1(c), 5.2.1), read November 1, 2026

Questions

Do crypto wallet apps need different screenshot sizes?

No. The size requirements are the same for every category. What differs is the scrutiny applied to what the images say.

Can a wallet listing show a large balance?

Showing a populated interface is normal and expected: an empty listing sells nothing. The risk is not the number, it is any implication that using the app produces it.

Why do crypto app listings get rejected more often?

Because the categories that touch money attract review of the claims, not just the design. Images promising performance, and copy that reads as financial advice, are the two recurring causes.

Can I make a screenshot that looks like a well-known wallet app?

Not if it reproduces that company’s interface, icon or product name: that breaches guidelines 5.2.1 and 4.1(c), however the image was made. A mockup that uses the shared conventions of a crypto wallet under your own brand is a different thing.

Written by My Larp Wallet, a crypto wallet app simulator: a mockup that opens on your phone, never a real wallet. For your own app’s screenshots, shoot your build; where a wallet mockup fits, and where it does not.