How to record clean iPhone app footage for a preview video (status bar, notifications, frame rate)

Why the footage decides everything

A preview is a screen capture with design on top. Apple's App Previews page says previews "demonstrate the features, functionality, and user interface of your app using footage captured on device", and the Review Guidelines restrict previews to "video screen captures of the app itself". So the capture is the whole raw material. A notification banner sliding in at second eight, a 37 percent battery, a red badge on the clock: none of those can be edited out without breaking the "real capture" rule, and all of them read as careless.

We re-record more often than we re-edit. Getting the capture right is cheaper than anything that follows, and most of the reasons Apple rejects previews start here.

Recording on an iPhone

Use the built-in screen recorder. Add it to Control Center under Settings, Control Center, then swipe down and tap the record button. It records the screen at the device's native resolution and, on recent iPhones, at up to 60 frames per second.

Before recording:

1. Charge to 100 percent. The battery icon is real on a device recording, and a full battery reads as clean.
2. Turn on a Focus mode (Do Not Disturb) so no banners or calls interrupt. Also silence any app that might show an in-app alert during the flow.
3. Clear notification badges on any icon that might appear, and close other apps.
4. Log into a demo account with realistic, complete data. Real names of real people, real photos of real customers and anything you would not want in a store listing should not be in the account.
5. Set the language of the device to the language of the listing you are recording for.
6. Decide the exact tap sequence and rehearse it twice. Hesitation shows.

While recording, move at the pace a confident user would, slightly slower than natural. Pause a beat on each screen the edit will hold. If you make a mistake, keep recording and repeat the step; cutting is easy, re-recording the whole flow is not.

The clock is the one thing a device recording cannot set to 9:41. If it matters to you, record at 9:41 in the morning, or accept a real time. It is the least noticeable of the status bar elements.

Recording in the Simulator

Xcode's Simulator gives you a fully controllable status bar and pixel exact output. Two commands do the work.

Override the status bar (Xcode 11 or later):

xcrun simctl status_bar booted override --time 9:41 --dataNetwork wifi --wifiMode active --wifiBars 3 --cellularMode active --cellularBars 4 --batteryState charged --batteryLevel 100

Record the screen:

xcrun simctl io booted recordVideo --codec h264 --mask ignored recording.mp4

Press Control+C to stop. The --mask ignored option records the full rectangle without the rounded corner mask, which is what you want for a preview; the store shows the video inside its own rounded frame. Run xcrun simctl status_bar without arguments to see every flag, and xcrun simctl status_bar booted clear to reset.

Is Simulator footage allowed? Apple's guidance names footage captured on device and suggests recording with QuickTime from a connected iPhone. Simulator output shows the same interface at the same pixels, and it is widely used, but the device path is the one Apple describes. If your app depends on the camera, sensors or performance that the Simulator cannot show, record on a device.

Recording with QuickTime from a Mac

Connect the iPhone by cable, open QuickTime Player, choose File, New Movie Recording, and pick the iPhone as the camera in the dropdown next to the record button. This is the method Apple's own page recommends, it records at the device's resolution, and it keeps the recording off the phone's storage. The status bar behaves as on the device, so the same preparation applies.

Getting from a recording to the App Store spec

The App Preview Specifications are exact, and the recording will not match them out of the camera roll.

Resolution: current iPhones record around 1170 by 2532 or 1206 by 2622 pixels. The App Store wants 886 by 1920 for the 6.1 to 6.9 inch slot, which is the same shape, so it is a straight scale with no cropping. Older slots want 1080 by 1920 and 750 by 1334, which are different shapes and need a crop or a letterbox decision. The formats guide lists every placement's size.

Frame rate: the spec allows up to 30 frames per second. A 60 fps recording has to be conformed; export at 30 and let the editor drop frames, or set the sequence to 30 before you cut.

Codec: H.264 at 10 to 12 Mbps in a .mov, .m4v or .mp4, or ProRes 422 HQ. iPhone screen recordings are often saved as HEVC when the camera format is set to High Efficiency; that is fine for editing, but export H.264.

Audio: the spec lists stereo AAC or PCM at 44.1 or 48 kHz with all tracks enabled. Even a silent preview is safer with a proper stereo track than with no track at all.

Length: 15 to 30 seconds. Check the exported file, not the timeline.

The Android equivalent

Android has the same two tools, built into the platform.

Record with adb, from the Android developer documentation:

adb shell screenrecord --bit-rate 20000000 --time-limit 30 /sdcard/demo.mp4
adb pull /sdcard/demo.mp4

The default bit rate is 20 Mbps, the maximum length is three minutes, audio is not recorded, and rotating the screen during recording is not supported. Stop early with Control+C.

Clean the status bar with demo mode, which lives in the system UI:

adb shell settings put global sysui_demo_allowed 1
adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.systemui.demo -e command enter
adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.systemui.demo -e command clock -e hhmm 1200
adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.systemui.demo -e command battery -e level 100 -e plugged false
adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.systemui.demo -e command network -e wifi show -e level 4
adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.systemui.demo -e command notifications -e visible false

and afterwards:

adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.systemui.demo -e command exit

The full list of demo mode commands is in the AOSP SystemUI documentation. Google Play's promo video is a YouTube upload rather than a file at a fixed size, so you export at 1080p in the orientation that matches the app and skip the resolution gymnastics.

Small things that make footage look professional

Turn off the on-screen touch indicator unless you plan to use it as a design element; Apple allows an animated touch point as an overlay, and an overlay you add in the edit looks better than the system one. Make sure the keyboard shows the right language and no personal autocomplete suggestions. Use an account name that could belong to a customer, not "Test Account 3". Fill lists so they scroll. Set the app's theme to the one your screenshots use. And record ten seconds more at the start and the end than you think you need, because the edit always wants a still frame to hold on.