Google Play Tablet and Chromebook Screenshots: Rules and Design Tips

TL;DR: Google Play has separate screenshot slots for 7-inch tablets, 10-inch tablets and Chromebooks. Each side of a tablet screenshot must be between 1,080 and 7,680 px, and Google recommends at least 4 per device type for visibility on large screens. Show your app's real tablet layout, not a stretched phone screen, and keep text minimal so nothing important gets cropped.

Phone screenshots are what you need to publish. Tablet and Chromebook screenshots live in their own large-screen section of the store listing graphics, with their own rules.

Use the same file rules as for phone screenshots: JPEG or 24-bit PNG with no alpha channel. Google's help page also sets landscape and portrait aspect ratios for this section, so start from a canvas that's known to pass. The Google Play screenshot size guide lists exact pixel dimensions, and our free screenshot size checker tells you which store slot an image fits and flags hidden alpha channels.

For the full set of phone rules, see Google Play screenshot requirements. For where tablet assets sit among the other listing fields, see the Google Play store listing guide.

People browsing Google Play on a tablet, foldable or Chromebook want to know one thing: does this app work well on my screen? Phone screenshots can't answer that. Tablet screenshots can.

Three points from Google's own guidance are worth knowing:

• Visibility. Google recommends at least 4 tablet screenshots per device type for your app to be visible to large-screen users.
• Cropping. Google warns that text that isn't part of the core app experience can be cut off on Play home surfaces on some screen sizes. Minimal text is safer.
• Listing updates. Android's adaptive app quality guidelines encourage you to update your listing with screenshots that show the app on tablets and foldables once you've optimized it.

Those guidelines describe tiers of large-screen support, from apps that simply run full screen without letterboxing up to experiences designed specifically for large screens. Your screenshots should reflect where your app really is. They can present it well; they can't make a phone layout look like a tablet app.

Google's Metadata policy expects screenshots to reflect the real app experience. That rules out mockups of a tablet layout you haven't shipped. It also gives you a design brief: show what's better on the big screen.

• Multi-pane layouts: a list and its detail side by side, or a sidebar with content.
• More context: a full calendar month, a whole spreadsheet, a larger canvas.
• Input: stylus drawing, keyboard shortcuts or drag and drop, if your app supports them.
• Orientation: landscape for productivity, video, games and creative tools; portrait for reading and chat.

Here's how a tablet set usually differs from a phone set:

If your app currently shows its phone layout on tablets, be honest: upload fewer, well-framed screenshots, and put adaptive layouts on your roadmap.

1. In Android Studio, create a tablet virtual device. Android's quality guidelines suggest the Medium Tablet emulator for tablet testing, and a foldable emulator if you support foldables.
2. Load realistic demo data: real-looking names, content and numbers, never placeholder text.
3. Clean up the status bar with System UI demo mode, as described in our clean status bar guide.
4. Capture with the emulator's screenshot button, or from the command line with adb exec-out screencap -p > tablet.png.
5. For Chromebooks, run the app on a ChromeOS device and use its built-in screenshot tool, or capture a large landscape window from the emulator if that matches what Chromebook users see.
6. Check each raw capture's size before you design around it.

Our Android emulator screenshot guide covers device profiles, save locations and common capture problems in more detail.

The principles of a good phone set still apply; the canvas just changes.

• Keep your story order. If screenshot 1 on phones sells the core benefit, it should on tablets too. Consistency makes the listing feel deliberate.
• Scale type with the canvas. Text sized for a phone looks lost on a 10-inch canvas. Keep headlines short and readable at thumbnail size.
• Keep text away from the edges. Because Play can crop large-screen assets on some surfaces, put headlines and key UI in the central area.
• Use one frame style. Pick a tablet frame or go frameless, and use it on every screenshot in the set.
• Feature a tablet strength early. Put the multi-pane view or stylus feature in position 2 or 3.
• Localize like your phone set. Translated headlines over untranslated UI look careless.

The same thinking applies to Apple's platform, covered in iPad App Store screenshots, and the general rules are in Google Play screenshot best practices.

1. At least 4 screenshots for each large-screen slot you support.
2. Every side between 1,080 and 7,680 px, at an accepted aspect ratio.
3. JPEG or 24-bit PNG, no alpha channel.
4. Real tablet UI, captured from the current app version.
5. Clean status bar and realistic demo data.
6. Headlines short, large and away from the edges.
7. Same story order and style as the phone set.
8. Localized versions for every language with translated headlines.