App Store New Creative Assets: Product Page Guide

Apple, on August 5, 2026, published its "Get ready for new creative assets" announcement, introducing an entirely new creative asset category for App Store product pages, search results, and In-App Events. In this guide I explain, based entirely on Apple's official sources, what's changing, which formats and sizes are valid, how to produce them with templates, and the most common upload mistakes. This covers the technical boundaries you need to know before uploading to App Store Connect.

💡 Pro Tip: Before uploading the new creative assets, download one of Apple's Figma/Photoshop/Pixelmator/Sketch templates — you'll work on a ready-made grid instead of calculating pixel ratios by hand.

Table of Contents

• What changed in the August 5 announcement
• New asset formats and placements
• Search result asset: what happens if you don't upload one
• Production workflow with templates (for teams without a designer)
• Localization: producing assets in multiple languages
• Measuring which asset wins with A/B testing
• Upload checklist and common mistakes
• FAQ
• What are the new creative asset formats on the App Store?
• What visual is shown in search results?
• Do I need to refresh my existing screenshots?
• On which operating system version do the new creative assets appear?
• When do Asset Library and Product page preview become available?
• What content is prohibited in creative assets?
• Conclusion
• Sources

What changed in the August 5 announcement

Apple's August 5, 2026 "Get ready for new creative assets on the App Store" announcement arrived as a follow-up to the pre-notice from June 2026. In the announcement text, Apple states that it introduced new ways to market your app across the "product page header, search results, In-App Events, and more." The same announcement also explicitly mentions that Figma, Photoshop, and Pixelmator design templates were shared to help you prepare for the fall launch.

The scope isn't limited to "one new visual area": according to Apple's asset-best-practices page, these creative assets appear across the App Store only on iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 and later — users on older operating systems won't see them at all. This version dependency is the most critical detail not to overlook when planning; even after uploading your assets, visibility for the portion of your user base that hasn't moved to iOS 27 yet doesn't change.

New asset formats and placements

The new creative assets aren't used in a single place — they appear at multiple points across the App Store. According to Apple's announcement and the asset best practices and what's new pages, these assets are shown in the following areas:

• Product page header: The first thing a user notices when they land on your product page.
• Search results: Displayed on the card when a user finds your app in the Search tab.
• In-App Events: Shown in the card and detail views of event announcements.
• Custom product pages and Apple Ads: These assets can also be used in custom product page tests and Apple Ads campaigns.

This doesn't replace your existing screenshots — it's added as a separate layer. If you're already applying general App Store Optimization (ASO) strategy, think of these new assets as a concrete implementation step layered on top of that strategy; to avoid mixing the two, I keep general ASO tactics in that article and format/size details here.

These four placements show up in four different contexts: the header greets a visitor to your product page, the search result sets the first visual at the moment of discovery, In-App Events announces a live event, and custom product pages can carry a variant specific to a traffic source (say, an Apple Ads campaign). Reusing the same visual across placements is a path Apple explicitly recommends: the asset-best-practices page says you can use a "universal creative asset" for the header and search result — matching the "Universal" label in the template names.

To keep track of these four placements together, it helps to keep which asset is active where in a single place. Even for a small team, an inventory file like this shows which placement has been updated and which is still live with the old design:

1placements:
2  product_page_header:
3    status: updated
4    lastUpdated: "2026-10-01"
5  search_result:
6    status: updated
7    lastUpdated: "2026-10-01"
8  in_app_event:
9    status: pending
10    lastUpdated: null
11  custom_product_page:
12    status: pending
13    lastUpdated: null

Search result asset: what happens if you don't upload one

The mechanic is this: when a user finds your app from Search, an uploaded search result asset shows before the product page as the first point of contact. Without it, In-App Events, app previews, and screenshots take over automatically.

The practical result: the search result is no longer "part of your screenshots" — it's a separate, prioritized creative area. Leaving it empty means letting an auto-picked screenshot make the first impression, a choice generally outside your control.

That's why I recommend not leaving the search result asset for last. I usually finish the header and search result assets first — these two are the visuals most likely to be the first thing a user sees, regardless of how they arrive (search, discover, or a direct link). I plan In-App Events and custom product page assets later, based on the campaign calendar, since those are already tied to a specific time window or traffic source.

Production workflow with templates (for teams without a designer)

For solo developers or teams without a designer, Apple provides four official template sources: Figma, Photoshop, Pixelmator, and Sketch. (The August 5 announcement mentions only three of these; Sketch is additionally listed in the download list.) These templates can be downloaded from the asset-best-practices page and come with the correct pixel ratios — eliminating the risk of manual calculation.

Apple is also bringing two new tools to App Store Connect (in Apple's own words, arriving "this fall," not yet published):

• Asset Library: A new place to centrally manage your visual and video assets, submit them independently of your app, and pre-approve them for a future product page update or Apple Ads campaign.
• Product page preview: A tool that lets you preview your header, description, screenshot, and search result visuals before publishing.

Both are, in Apple's words, "coming this fall" — if you don't see them in App Store Connect yet, they haven't launched. Keeping your file organization tidy now eases the transition once they ship:

1#!/usr/bin/env bash
2# Organizes the creative asset folder structure by locale
3mkdir -p assets/{header,search-result,iap-event}/{tr,en-US,de,fr,es,it,ja,zh-Hans}
4for dir in assets/*/*/; do
5  echo "Prepared folder: $dir"
6done

Localization: producing assets in multiple languages

Apple's asset-best-practices page states that you can localize your metadata — including visuals and videos — per region and country where you offer your app. In other words, creative assets can be produced separately per language; the same rule applies to app preview videos. In practice, the workflow looks like this:

1. Produce the master design (English or your primary language) at the template ratios.
2. Keep text layers in a separate Figma/Photoshop layer group — when a translation comes in, change only that layer.
3. Export the same grid for each locale, and label file names with the locale code.

1{
2  "asset": "search-result",
3  "masterRatio": "same-as-header",
4  "locales": {
5    "tr": "search-result-tr.png",
6    "en-US": "search-result-en.png",
7    "de": "search-result-de.png"
8  }
9}

This manifest lets you see at a glance which locale matches which file — the thing that wastes the most time across multiple languages is the wrong file uploaded to the wrong locale.

Measuring which asset wins with A/B testing

Apple's asset-best-practices page explicitly states that you can test alternative header visuals with "product page optimization" and see which one performs better. That's the extent of the mechanic the source gives: alternative header variants are compared through the product page optimization tool.

In practice, you can use App Store Connect's product page optimization tests to try out variants of the new creative assets. To see how a test is progressing, you open App Analytics and select your test; there, for each treatment you see impression count, conversion rate, percentage improvement, and confidence level, compared against your chosen reference (by default, the original product page). You can also configure product analytics setup for in-product, event-based analysis.

Looking at a single metric alone (say, only impression count) when interpreting test results can be misleading; reading App Store Connect's conversion rate together with confidence level gives a more reliable picture. A simple tracking template like the one below is enough to keep track of which variant was tested on which date:

1{
2  "test": "search-result-v2",
3  "variant": "B",
4  "startDate": "2026-10-20",
5  "endDate": "2026-11-03",
6  "metricsSource": ["App Store Connect", "PostHog"]
7}

Upload checklist and common mistakes

Apple's App Store Connect Help page defines clear technical limits for screenshots. Here's a table summarizing them:

Checking for the alpha channel locally before uploading is faster than waiting for App Store Connect to reject it:

1# Check whether the PNG file has an alpha channel (ImageMagick)
2magick identify -format "%[channels]\n" screenshot.png
3# You expect "srgb" in the output; if you see "srgba" or "rgba", remove the alpha channel:
4magick screenshot.png -alpha off screenshot-no-alpha.png

There are also content restrictions on creative assets — according to Apple's asset-best-practices page, the following are prohibited:

A final automated check before upload is to quickly verify that the screenshot count per folder stays within the 1-10 range:

1# Check the screenshot count in each locale folder
2for dir in assets/screenshots/*/; do
3  count=$(find "$dir" -maxdepth 1 -type f \( -name "*.png" -o -name "*.jpg" -o -name "*.jpeg" \) | wc -l)
4  if [ "$count" -lt 1 ] || [ "$count" -gt 10 ]; then
5    echo "WARNING: $dir has $count files (outside the 1-10 range)"
6  fi
7done

One final technical note: according to Apple's iPhone Duo store page, the device opens for pre-order on October 16, 2026, and goes on sale on October 23, 2026. Support for uploading assets to App Store Connect for this device is, in Apple's words, coming "later this year" — even though the sizes have been published on the specification page, the upload option may not be open yet.

FAQ

What are the new creative asset formats on the App Store?

The creative assets introduced in Apple's August 2026 announcement cover separate format sets for the product page header, the search results card, and In-App Events. These are defined as visual/video assets that go beyond existing screenshots to highlight your brand or new content.

What visual is shown in search results?

If you've uploaded a search result creative asset, when a user finds your app from the Search tab, this visual is shown as the first point of contact before the product page. If you don't upload one, In-App Events, app previews, and screenshots are shown automatically instead.

Do I need to refresh my existing screenshots?

No, it's not required — screenshots remain a separate category (up to 10 per product page). The new creative assets are an additional layer on top of this; however, the effect is only actually visible on the App Store on iOS 27 and later devices.

On which operating system version do the new creative assets appear?

According to Apple's asset-best-practices page, these assets appear across the App Store on iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 and later versions. Users on versions before iOS 27 don't see these assets.

When do Asset Library and Product page preview become available?

Apple announced that both tools are coming to App Store Connect "this fall"; no exact date has been disclosed. If you don't see these sections in your App Store Connect account, they haven't launched yet.

What content is prohibited in creative assets?

Price/discount information, website URLs, copyright symbols, other platform or store logos, unverifiable award claims, and Apple-exclusive award badges (Editor's Choice, App of the Day, etc.) are prohibited. Additionally, all creative assets must meet a 4+ age rating, even if the app's own age rating is higher.

Conclusion

The creative assets introduced in Apple's August 2026 announcement aren't a single area on the App Store — they're a unified creative layer spanning the product page header, search results, and In-App Events. Getting the iOS 27+ requirement and the format rules (no alpha channel, 1-10 screenshots, a 30-second preview limit) right from the start is far cheaper than facing rejection later.

In short: the new creative assets aren't "extra decoration" — they redefine your first point of contact with users. Downloading the templates, producing assets at the correct sizes, managing expectations around the iOS 27 requirement, and completing the pre-upload checklist in full is the shortest path to launching without rejection on the first try.

If you want to review your overall ASO strategy, check out the App Store Optimization (ASO) guide. For a growth story backed by real numbers, you can read about the strategy I used to earn $1M on the iOS App Store. If you also want to keep your subscription side up to date, the App Store Connect Subscriptions guide will be useful. If you're thinking about automating the upload process, the App Store Connect API automation article could be your next step. Developers in the EU should also keep track of the new requirements stemming from the DMA.

Sources

• Get ready for new creative assets on the App Store — Apple Developer News — the August 5, 2026 announcement itself.
• App Store Product Page — Apple Developer — app preview duration and count rules.
• Asset best practices — Apple Developer — iOS 27+ requirement, prohibited content list, template links.
• What's new for the App Store — Apple Developer — Asset Library and Product page preview announcement.
• Screenshot specifications — App Store Connect Help — screenshot size and format rules.
• iPhone Duo — Apple Store — pre-order and release dates.