App Store
App previews, sized for the store
Record the app, let the zooms land on the moments worth seeing, and export at the shape the listing wants.
Apple Silicon · macOS 14+ · one email when the first build is ready
An app preview is thirty seconds long, autoplays without sound, and sits next to preview videos from teams with a motion designer. It is the least forgiving video format there is.
It also cannot be a plain screen recording. At the size it plays back, a faithful capture of a whole interface is unreadable, and the store's frame requirements mean a landscape recording usually arrives cropped.
Push in, because nothing else will
Prequel records where you click and type while it captures, and turns those moments into zooms before the editor opens. On a preview that is the entire game: thirty seconds is enough for three or four moments, each one filling the frame while it happens.
Region zooms are worth knowing about here. They hold still on an area you draw, which is what you want when the point is a screen the viewer has to read rather than a pointer moving. Level and speed are per zoom, so a preview can move quickly without feeling frantic.
The frame the store asks for
Frame presets cover 16:9, 4K, vertical 9:16, square 1:1 and portrait 4:5. Because framing is stored as proportions of the shorter edge rather than in pixels, moving a take between them re-frames it instead of cropping it — the padding stays proportional and anything you positioned stays where you put it.
Details that read as production
The cursor leaves frame after a few seconds of stillness, which is the difference between a preview that looks authored and one that looks like somebody's desktop. It also has four styles and a size that survives a zoom.
Behind the recording sits a background — your own wallpaper, one of seven bundled presets, a gradient or a solid — with padding, corner radius, border and shadow on top.
Export is hardware H.264 or HEVC at up to 4K, made on your own machine.
Automatic
It arrives already directed
A raw screen recording is flat — one distance from the viewer for the whole take, with the thing that matters too small to see. Prequel watches where you click and type while it records, and opens the editor with that pass already made.
- Zooms placedOn every click and every burst of typing
- Camera framedShaped, sized and set in a corner
- Background appliedPadding, radius, border and shadow
- Audio balancedMicrophone and system on separate gains
- Cursor cleaned upSmoothed, resized, hidden when it idles
The editor
Everything you would have done in post
It opens by itself when you stop recording, on the take you just made. Nothing to import, nothing to line up.
Zooms that follow the work
Push in on the cursor, a region or whatever you are typing into. Level, speed, tilt and yaw, with progressive blur falling away from the focus.
A camera you frame afterwards
Circle, squircle, rounded or wide, in any corner and any size. The webcam is never burned into the recording, so none of it is decided while you record.
Backgrounds worth shipping
Your own wallpaper by default, seven bundled presets, gradients and solids. Padding, radius, border and shadow on top.
Cuts on a real timeline
Trim the dead air, slice by slice, with a waveform under every clip and a playhead that scrubs. Layout, background and audio can all change mid-take.
A cursor that behaves
Four pointer styles, resized to survive a zoom, and gone from the frame after a few seconds of stillness rather than parked over your work.
What you see is what exports
The preview and the exporter draw the same plan, so the file is the frame you approved — not a close approximation of it.
Quality
Exports that hold up
A video that looks produced is worth nothing if the file is soft. Capture and export run on your Mac's own media engine — hardware H.264 or HEVC, composited in Metal — so 1080p60 records without dropping frames and 4K is a setting rather than a compromise.
- Resolution
- Up to 4K
- Frame rate
- Up to 120 fps
- Codecs
- H.264 · HEVC
- Encoding
- Hardware, VideoToolbox
- Compositing
- Metal
- Output
- Constant frame rate MP4
Formats
One MP4, shaped for wherever it is going
Switch a recording from landscape to vertical and the look holds — the framing is stored in proportions, not pixels, so nothing slides off the frame on the way.
- Landscape 16:9
- 4K
- Vertical 9:16
- Square 1:1
- Portrait 4:5
- YouTube
- Shorts
- TikTok
- Reels
- X
Be there for the first build
Prequel is in development. Leave an address and we will send it the day it is worth installing.
Curious about the internals? Read the blog
FAQ
Zooms, exports and the rest
How long should an App Store preview be?
Apple takes previews between 15 and 30 seconds, which is less time than it sounds. Record the app properly and cut down to it — the timeline has a waveform under every clip, so finding the thirty seconds that carry the app is a scrub rather than a guess.
Can I export at the exact frame the store asks for?
Frame presets cover 16:9, 4K, vertical 9:16, square, 4:5 and the usual social sizes, and switching between them keeps the framing intact rather than cropping it.
Can I record without the cursor in shot?
The cursor leaves the frame after a few seconds of stillness on its own, and its style and size are yours to set. A preview that is meant to look like a product film rather than a screen capture is what that setting is for.
How do I fit several features into thirty seconds?
Let the zooms carry the transitions. Each push in and pull back reads as a beat, so three features become three moments rather than one continuous pan, and the seconds in between are the first thing to trim.
Will a preview recorded on a Retina display be sharp enough?
Capture runs at your display's native resolution and export runs at up to 4K on your Mac's own media engine, so there is genuine detail behind a push rather than an upscale.
Can I record an iOS app for a preview?
Not from the device directly — Prequel captures your Mac. Mirroring the device to your Mac and recording that window works, and everything after the capture is the same.
What do I need to record an app preview on macOS?
Apple Silicon, macOS 14 at the oldest, and Screen Recording switched on under Privacy & Security. Nothing about the preview itself is set up in advance — the frame size, the background and the thirty-second cut are all chosen after the take exists.