Portrait vs Landscape App Store Previews: Which Should You Use?

Orientation follows the app

The most important thing to understand about preview orientation: it must match the orientation your app uses. Apple requires the preview to reflect how the app is actually used on a real device. This is not a stylistic choice — it is a submission requirement enforced by App Store Connect at upload time.

If your app is a portrait-mode productivity tool, your preview must be portrait. If your app is a landscape game, your preview must be landscape. You do not get to pick based on what looks cooler, what trends say, or what your competitors are doing. The orientation rule is simple, binary, and non-negotiable.

That one sentence decides the question for maybe 95% of apps on the App Store. For the remaining 5% — apps that genuinely support both orientations — the decision is more nuanced, and we cover that later in this guide.

Portrait vs landscape at a glance

Before the detail, here is the quick comparison most people are looking for:

• Portrait previews — vertical format (9:19.5 aspect). Used by the vast majority of iOS apps. Tall narrow card on the product page and in search. Ideal for utilities, productivity, social, finance, health, casual games, and any app where the UI is stacked vertically.
• Landscape previews — horizontal format (19.5:9 aspect). Used by apps locked to landscape: most console-style games, video editors, racing games, cinematic experiences, and any app where the user rotates the device to use it. Wider card on the listing, often shown larger in search.

Both are supported equally by Apple. Neither is "better" in the abstract. The right answer is whichever orientation matches how your app actually runs.

Portrait previews: the default path

Portrait is the overwhelming default. Most iPhone apps are designed to be held in one hand, used with the thumb, in portrait orientation. So most previews are portrait. If you are not sure what to pick, you are almost certainly building a portrait app.

Portrait previews display as a vertical card on the product page. When a user taps into your listing, the preview sits prominently at the top, full-width for its aspect ratio. In search results on iPhone, a portrait preview appears as a tall narrow panel that autoplays silently while the user scrolls — one of the highest-value placements on the entire App Store.

Which app categories tend toward portrait

In practice, the following categories are almost always portrait:

• Productivity and utilities — note-takers, task managers, calculators, scanners, file utilities. The UI is usually a vertical list or form, so the preview is too.
• Social and messaging — feeds scroll vertically, conversations stack vertically, profiles are vertical cards. Portrait is the only sensible orientation.
• Health, fitness, and habit tracking — dashboards, progress rings, daily logs all live in portrait.
• Finance and banking — account lists, transaction history, charts. All portrait.
• Casual and puzzle games — most match-three, idle, word, and card games play in portrait. Think of the thumb-friendly bottom-third tap target pattern.
• E-commerce and content apps — product grids, article lists, media feeds. Portrait.

Required dimensions for portrait previews

Apple's current requirements for portrait App Store previews are defined by the device class the video will display on. You need at least one preview that matches one of these dimensions:

• 6.9" display (iPhone 16 Pro Max, 15 Pro Max): 886 × 1920 px or 1080 × 1920 px
• 6.5" display (iPhone 11 Pro Max, XS Max): 886 × 1920 px or 1080 × 1920 px
• 5.5" display (iPhone 8 Plus and earlier Plus models): 1080 × 1920 px

If your app supports iPad, you will also need an iPad-sized preview: 1200 × 1600, 1600 × 1200, or 1080 × 1920 depending on the iPad class and the orientation you pick. Apple auto-scales previews across similar device classes, so one well-prepared portrait master can cover every modern iPhone.

Landscape previews: when the app demands it

Landscape previews are used by apps that run locked or primarily in landscape. The canonical examples are games: console-style titles, racing games, strategy games with wide maps, cinematic adventure games, and anything where the player holds the device horizontally with two hands.

The other common case is video. Video editors, professional camera apps, and media-playback apps often require landscape because their UI is built around a 16:9 preview window. If your app's core experience only makes sense at a landscape aspect ratio, the preview must be landscape too.

Where landscape has a visual edge

On the product page, landscape previews appear as a wide horizontal card. Because the card is wider, the video has more canvas to work with. For games with detailed environments, character animations, or cinematic moments, this extra horizontal space is an advantage. You can show more of the world, more of the HUD, more of the action.

In search results, landscape previews often render larger relative to the rest of the card than portrait previews do — partly because the card has to make room for a 16:9 video, and partly because Apple's layout gives landscape previews prominence. For a visually rich game, that larger rendering is a real conversion lever.

Required dimensions for landscape previews

• 6.9" display: 1920 × 886 px or 1920 × 1080 px
• 6.5" display: 1920 × 886 px or 1920 × 1080 px
• 5.5" display: 1920 × 1080 px
• iPad: 1600 × 1200 px (or 1200 × 1600 for mixed-orientation iPad apps)

Full dimensions reference

Here is the full specification of supported preview dimensions for both orientations. Whichever orientation your app uses, these are the exact pixel sizes App Store Connect will accept:

• Portrait, iPhone 6.9" / 6.5": 886 × 1920 or 1080 × 1920
• Portrait, iPhone 5.5": 1080 × 1920
• Landscape, iPhone 6.9" / 6.5": 1920 × 886 or 1920 × 1080
• Landscape, iPhone 5.5": 1920 × 1080
• iPad 13" / 12.9": 1600 × 1200 (landscape) or 1200 × 1600 (portrait)
• iPad 11" / 10.5" / 9.7": 1200 × 1600 (portrait) or 1600 × 1200 (landscape)

File constraints apply to both orientations: H.264 or HEVC encoding, 30fps, 15–30 seconds in length, and under 500 MB. Dimensions that do not match exactly — even off by a pixel or two — will be rejected at upload.

What about apps that support both orientations?

A meaningful number of apps — split-view productivity tools, some games, tablet-first apps — genuinely work in both portrait and landscape. Apple's rule for these is pragmatic: pick the orientation that represents the primary experience, and build the preview around it.

In practice, that usually means whichever orientation the app opens in by default on an iPhone. If the app launches in portrait and users rotate to landscape occasionally, the preview should be portrait. If the app launches in landscape or spends most of the user's session in landscape, the preview should be landscape.

You cannot upload one preview of each orientation for a single device class. Apple expects one orientation per preview slot. If you have strong reason to show both (for example, a game with distinct portrait and landscape modes), the standard approach is to produce three portrait previews that together cover both experiences — not split the orientations.

Orientation and autoplay

There is one under-discussed reason orientation matters beyond dimensions: previews autoplay in search results, silently, on mute. Whatever shows in the first two seconds of your video is what a significant share of searchers will see before they decide to tap or scroll past.

The implication for orientation: the preview card in search is already smaller than the one on the listing page. A portrait preview has maybe 200–250 pixels of horizontal space to work with when it autoplays in search. A landscape preview has more horizontal room but less vertical height. In both cases, you need to plan the opening shot for the autoplay thumbnail, not for the full-size experience.

This is why we recommend designing the opening three seconds of any preview — portrait or landscape — as if it were an ad that has to read in a fraction of a second. If you are curious about how to handle that opening, we wrote a full piece on what should happen in the first three seconds of an app preview.

Does orientation affect conversion?

Not as much as people think. Over the last decade of producing preview videos, we have not seen a reliable pattern where orientation by itself moves conversion rate. What moves conversion rate is:

• The quality and pacing of the first three seconds
• How clearly the value proposition is communicated without sound
• Whether the preview shows real app usage versus generic promotional footage
• Whether the CTA and closing frame guide the viewer toward the install action

Landscape games with cinematic environments can get a small boost from the wider canvas — you have more space to show the world, the action, the scale of what you have built. But for a run-of-the-mill utility, swapping portrait for landscape would not change anything even if Apple allowed it. The content is what converts. Orientation is table stakes.

For a deeper look at whether previews move the needle at all, our post on whether App Store preview videos actually increase installs walks through what the data does and doesn't show.

Common orientation mistakes

Most orientation problems we see fall into one of four buckets:

• Uploading the wrong aspect ratio entirely. A 1080 × 1920 portrait file submitted for an app configured as landscape-only. App Store Connect rejects it immediately, and the developer loses a review cycle.
• Filming in one orientation, framing for another. Building a portrait preview around compositions that only work in landscape (text rendered too wide, subjects cropped off the sides). The file uploads fine, but the video looks wrong.
• Mixing orientations across the three preview slots. Apple gives you up to three preview videos per device class. All three must be the same orientation. You cannot have one portrait and two landscape for the same device.
• Ignoring the autoplay frame. Filming a beautiful landscape preview where the first two seconds are a letterboxed intro or a blank background. By the time the content kicks in, the searcher has scrolled past.

FAQ

Can I upload a portrait preview for a landscape-only app?

No. App Store Connect rejects mismatched orientations at upload. Your preview must match the orientation your app supports according to its Info.plist configuration.

If my app supports both orientations, which should I use?

Pick the orientation that represents the primary experience — usually whichever the app opens in by default. If the two experiences are genuinely distinct, build the preview around the one you most want new users to see first.

Does landscape get more search impressions than portrait?

No. Apple's algorithm does not prefer one orientation over the other. What matters is relevance, metadata, and how strongly your listing converts once users arrive.

Can I use multiple preview orientations across different device classes?

Within a single device class, all three preview slots must share the same orientation. Across device classes (iPhone vs iPad), you can technically use different orientations if the app behaves differently on each device, but this is rare in practice.

Do I need separate portrait and landscape masters for different iPhone sizes?

Not necessarily. Apple auto-scales 6.9" and 6.5" previews across all modern iPhone displays. For older 5.5" displays, you may want a separate master. We covered this in depth in our post on whether you need separate recordings for different Apple screen sizes.

Is 886 × 1920 better than 1080 × 1920 for portrait?

Both are accepted. 886 × 1920 matches the exact aspect ratio of a modern iPhone screen with the dynamic island, so if your footage is captured on-device, 886 × 1920 is usually the cleaner choice. 1080 × 1920 is standard 9:16 vertical video and works fine too. Pick whichever your source footage produces natively.

The practical checklist

To summarize, here is exactly what to do before you start production:

1. Confirm your app's supported orientation in the Info.plist or Xcode project settings. Portrait-only, landscape-only, or both.
2. Pick the preview orientation based on that. If the app supports both, pick the primary experience.
3. Choose your device classes (6.9", 6.5", 5.5", iPad) and note the pixel dimensions for each.
4. Brief your editor on the orientation before storyboarding. Compositions locked to the wrong aspect ratio are expensive to redo.
5. Export at the exact required dimensions — no scaling, no letterboxing, no borders.
6. Test the first two seconds as an autoplaying thumbnail before you submit. If it does not read at thumbnail size, the whole preview loses most of its value.

Orientation itself is a simple decision once you know the app's supported orientations. The work that matters — structure, pacing, first three seconds — applies equally to portrait and landscape. Get the orientation right so Apple accepts the file, then put your energy where it actually moves installs.