What is the best way to make App Store screenshots?

It depends on what your bottleneck is. If you re-shoot screenshots on every release, automation like fastlane pays for itself. If you need total visual control, a design tool does. If your problem is that screenshots plus keywords plus localization is too much manual work, a dedicated app fits better. There is no single best answer.

Can I just use Figma for App Store screenshots?

Yes, and many teams do. Figma gives you complete design control. What it does not give you is App Store knowledge — it will happily let you export the wrong pixel size, and it has no concept of keyword fields, localization sets or Apple's character limits. The design is the easy part; the store rules are what catch people out.

Is fastlane still worth using for screenshots?

For capturing raw screens automatically across devices and languages from UI tests, it is excellent and hard to beat. Its cost is setup and maintenance: you are writing and maintaining UI tests, which is real engineering work. It also captures screens rather than designing marketing images.

Storeboard/Screenshot tools compared

App Store screenshot tools compared

There are four ways people do this, and they're good at genuinely different things. We make one of them — so this page includes the cases where you shouldn't use ours.

Last updated 16 July 2026

Short version

Re-shooting screens every release? Automation. Need total design control? A design tool. Want a browser and a team? A cloud tool. Drowning in screenshots × languages × keywords, and don't want to upload unreleased work? A native app.

The four approaches

1. Cloud screenshot tools

Browser-based editors: upload your screens, arrange them on a template, export the sizes.

Good at: starting instantly with nothing installed, working from any machine, and team collaboration with shared links. If several people touch the listing, that matters.

Costs you: a subscription that runs whether you're shipping this month or not — and screenshot work is bursty, so you pay through the quiet stretches. And your unreleased interface is uploaded to someone else's servers, which is a shrug for some people and a dealbreaker for anyone under an NDA. Most are also design-only: no keyword research, no listing metadata.

2. Design tools (Figma, Sketch, Photoshop)

The generalist option, and a completely legitimate one.

Good at: total control. Anything you can imagine, you can build. If your screenshots need to be genuinely art-directed — custom illustration, brand-specific composition — nothing else comes close.

Costs you: the tool knows nothing about the App Store. It will let you export 1170×2532 into a slot that wants 1284×2778 and only App Store Connect will tell you. It has no concept of keyword fields, character limits, or localization sets. And every language means duplicating frames by hand — which is why teams using design tools so often ship English-only. The design was never the hard part.

3. fastlane (snapshot / frameit / deliver)

The open-source automation route: snapshot drives your UI tests to capture screens across simulators and languages, frameit wraps them in device frames, deliver uploads metadata and images to App Store Connect.

Good at: repeatability. If your screens change every release, this is the only approach where regenerating 60 images is a command rather than a weekend. It's free, scriptable, and runs in CI.

Costs you: setup and maintenance — you're writing UI tests whose job is posing your app for photos, and they break when your UI moves. It captures screens rather than designing marketing images: the caption writing, the visual identity and the ASO thinking are still entirely yours.

4. Native Mac apps (this is us)

Good at: the full path in one place — design, per-country keyword research, localized metadata, and pixel-exact export — with nothing uploaded and no subscription. On-device AI writes and translates captions, so fifteen languages is an export rather than a project.

Costs you: it's a Mac app, so there's no browser version and no team collaboration layer. It's a studio, not an automation pipeline — if you want screens regenerated in CI on every merge, that's not what this is. And it's opinionated about ASO, which is only a feature if you agree with it.

Side by side

	Cloud	Design tool	fastlane	Native app
Design control	Template-bound	Total	Frames only	High
Knows Apple's sizes	Usually	No	Yes	Yes
Keyword research	Rarely	No	No	Yes
Listing metadata	Rarely	No	Yes (deliver)	Yes
Translation	Rarely	No	No	Yes
Work stays local	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Runs in CI	No	No	Yes	No
Team collaboration	Yes	Yes	Via git	No
Cost shape	Subscription	Subscription	Free	One-time
Setup effort	None	Low	High	Low

When not to use Storeboard

Genuinely — these are the cases where something else is the better answer:

You regenerate screenshots on every release. If your screens change constantly, fastlane's automation beats any manual studio, ours included. Some teams capture with fastlane and design the marketing images separately — that combination works well.
You're not on a Mac. It's a native Mac app. No browser version, no Windows build.
Your screenshots are art-directed. If a designer is building custom illustration per screen, use their tools. We frame and caption; we don't illustrate.
Several people need to work on the listing at once. There's no server, which is the privacy story — and also why there's no shared cloud workspace.
You only ever ship English, one device. Our whole argument is the multiplication of languages × devices × keywords. One English iPhone set doesn't need this.

The question that actually decides it

Not "which tool is best" — that has no answer. It's what's your bottleneck?

If it's capture (screens change constantly), automate. If it's craft (the images must be exceptional), use design tools. If it's coordination (several people, one listing), go cloud. If it's everything else — the fact that shipping properly means ten screenshots × four devices × fifteen languages, plus a keyword field per country, plus a translated listing, and you'd rather be writing code — that's the gap we built for.

See if it fits

Design, keyword-optimize and localize your App Store screenshots on your Mac. On-device AI, no account, nothing uploaded.

Download for Mac

FAQ

Can I just use Figma?

Yes, and plenty of good apps do. You get complete design control; what you don't get is App Store knowledge — wrong pixel sizes export happily, and there's no notion of keyword fields or localization sets. If your listing is one language and one device, that trade is fine.

Is fastlane still the standard?

For automated capture it remains excellent and genuinely hard to beat, especially in CI. The cost is maintaining UI tests whose purpose is photographing your app. It also captures screens rather than designing marketing images — a different job from the one this page is mostly about.

Why does "nothing uploaded" matter if my app is already public?

Once you've shipped, much less. It matters most pre-launch, and it matters most of all for client work under NDA, where uploading an unreleased interface to a vendor may be a disclosure you're not permitted to make.

Can I use more than one of these?

Most people do. Capture with fastlane, art-direct the hero images in Figma, handle the long tail of languages and keywords elsewhere. These aren't mutually exclusive — they're different bottlenecks.