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As someone who has some apps on both stores but doesn't have a dedicated team working on app store listings, I often find myself wondering why Google and Apple,
by freehunter 8y ago
As someone who has some apps on both stores but doesn't have a dedicated team working on app store listings, I often find myself wondering why Google and Apple, two of the biggest tech companies in the world who created these platforms, stores, and the associated technologies completely from scratch, can't help me out just a little bit on icons and screenshots.
It's an absolute nightmare to develop on an iPhone X and try to get screenshots onto the store. You're required to have 5.5" screenshots, which means an iPhone 8 Plus. The guidelines specifically say your app has to be designed to work on all screen sizes, but I can't submit screenshots taken on my iPhone X or XS and submit them to the store. I have to resize them, which means cutting off the top and bottom to make it wide enough to fit the resolution of the iPhone 8 Plus. Apple, a genius of a tech company, cannot figure out how to display screenshots from an iPhone X on an iPhone 8, but they can show iPhone 8 screenshots on an iPhone X. My app is location-based, so screenshots have to be taken on-site... but I don't own an iPhone 8 Plus. I own an iPhone XS and an iPhone 8. But I can't use the screenshots from either without editing them to chop off the top and bottom.
Google gets it a bit better in that you can upload any screenshots you want of any size or resolution, but they require a separate icon upload. And while Apple's icons need to be 1024x1024, Google needs them to be exactly 512x512. Again, a genius tech company cannot figure out on their own website how to resize an image before it gets saved.
Not to mention Apple wants promo videos in portrait mode, even though iMovie does not support portrait mode videos. But Google wants your promos hosted on Youtube, which prefers landscape videos. So now every promo has to be shot and edited twice.
Changing from a round icon to a square icon is the least of my worries.
- hgjwq 8y agoWhy don't you use the iPhone Simulator to take the screenshots at different screen sizes? In my case they've never rejected the screenshots for having done that (and it clearly shows you've used the Simulator: they have "Carrier" as the carrier name).
- freehunter 8y agoMy app is location based, so either I have to edit my screenshots while I'm on-location or I have to edit my code to spoof my location. Either way it's extra work for me that could easily be handled on Apple's side
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 8y agoYou can set the location in the simulator.
- freehunter 8y agoHoly shit I've wasted so much time. So why does Apple make me submit a video of my app working in the real world if they can just spoof the location from their end?