FAQ

A short video showing your app in use. On the App Store it sits in the screenshot carousel; on Google Play it plays above the screenshots. It is also the asset you post on X, Product Hunt, Reddit and your landing page — and that is usually where it earns its keep, because a listing gets seen after someone is already interested, while a video is what makes them interested.

Probably not, and this is worth understanding before you submit. Apple expects App Previews to be captured on the device and to show the app itself, at specific resolutions — footage wrapped in a phone illustration is generally rejected for that slot.

Device-framed videos are for the places that reward them: your landing page, X, LinkedIn, Product Hunt, Reddit, TikTok, Reels, Shorts, ad creative, investor updates. Check Apple's current App Preview specification in App Store Connect before relying on any video for the store listing itself — the rules change, and we would rather you check than take our word.

Google Play takes a YouTube URL rather than a file, and it is more permissive about what the video contains — a framed, edited promo is normal there.

Apple allows 15–30 seconds for App Previews. For social, shorter wins: ten to fifteen seconds is usually the whole story, and people scroll past anything that takes longer to make its point. Shorter clips also render faster.

Three shapes, chosen by where the video will be posted. Portrait 9:16 (1080 × 1920) for TikTok, Reels, Shorts and stories — the shape phone recordings already come in. Landscape 16:9 (1920 × 1080) for YouTube, the X timeline, a landing-page hero and the Product Hunt gallery; it leaves room beside the phone for a headline. Feed 4:5 (1080 × 1350) for Instagram and LinkedIn posts. Going above 1080 on the short side mostly grows the file unless your recording was captured that large.

Android has a built-in screen recorder in the quick settings panel. For a cleaner result use adb shell screenrecord, which skips the recording indicator. Turn on Show taps in Developer options only if you want the system's own dots — if you are adding ripples afterwards, leave it off.

Add Screen Recording to Control Centre and record from there. The result is a portrait MP4, which is what you want.

Turn on Do Not Disturb before recording, and cover the status bar afterwards. TapCraft can replace the whole strip with a clean bar that matches your app's own colour, which is usually easier than trying to record a perfect one.

No. The well-known tools in this category are Mac-only desktop apps, which is why this one runs in the browser — it works the same on Windows, Linux and Mac.

No, for the main workflow: upload a recording or a screenshot, place taps by clicking, export — all in the browser. There is an optional command-line tool that captures exact tap coordinates over adb while you record, if you want ripples on the precise pixel your finger touched.

Either you click the preview to place them, or you capture them with the adb tool and import the file. Nothing is guessed from the video — an earlier attempt at automatic detection produced far more false positives than real taps, so it was removed rather than shipped as something that looks clever and is usually wrong.

Portrait MP4, MOV or WebM from a real device or an emulator — or a screenshot, as PNG, JPEG or WebP. A still gets the same handset, floor and status bar a recording does. Anything it cannot read is refused the moment you drop it, rather than at the end of an export.

Yes. Drop in a PNG, JPEG or WebP and it gets the same handset, backdrop, floor, status bar and entrance a recording does. You choose how long it runs, and taps, masks, magnifiers and text work on it the same way. It is the quickest way to turn store screenshots you already have into something that moves.

Yes. Draw a mask over it directly on the preview: block paints over it, blur softens it, and it stays for as long as its bar runs on the timeline. A mask never fades in, so there is no frame where the thing shows — and it stays covered inside a magnifier too.

Two ways. Taps drive the camera, which pushes in on the part of the screen being used. For a single detail — a price, a figure, a small toggle — draw a magnifier on the preview: that circle enlarges in place while the rest of the screen keeps playing, for the stretch you set on the timeline.

1080p free — 1080 × 1920 in portrait, 1920 × 1080 in landscape, 1080 × 1350 in feed — and 2K or 4K on a paid plan. The larger sizes only look sharper if your recording was captured that large: everything else in the frame is drawn fresh at any size, but your footage is only ever as detailed as it was recorded.

The watermark is what pays for the free tier, which gives you three watermarked exports once you sign in. It is tiled across the frame rather than tucked in a corner, because a corner badge is cropped off in seconds. Removing it is what the paid plans are for — and on Pro you can replace our wording with your own, so the same space works for you instead of us.

Free with the watermark: three exports once you sign in. $9.99 once for 10 watermark-free exports that never expire, or Pro at $15 a month or $60 a year — which works out at $5 a month. Full details on Pricing

Confirmations usually arrive within seconds. If several minutes pass, the most common cause is paying with a different email than the one you sign in with — purchases are matched by email address. Send us the address you paid with and we will connect it.

Yes, with your own audio file, on Pro. Music ducks automatically under a voiceover, and you can add a soft click on every tap. Exports are silent by default either way, which is right for store listings and muted autoplay.

Until you delete them — there is no automatic expiry today. Deleting a project from My videos removes the video, its thumbnail and its records.

No. They are read once by the renderer and served back to you — not watched, indexed, used in marketing, or used to train anything. See the Privacy

Exporting is real video encoding, and it scales with clip length and size. It runs in your browser using your own hardware, so a long clip at 4K on a modest machine takes the longest. Trimming to the part worth watching is the single biggest speed-up — and usually makes a better video.

Tell us what you were doing and we will look at it. Email tapcraftstudio1@gmail.com