Inspiration
Lots of people build genuinely good iOS apps, then lose downloads on the App Store page. Visitors decide in a few seconds, mostly from the screenshots. Most developers aren't marketers, and advice like "show value, not features" doesn't show what a good screenshot looks like. The fastest way to learn is to see many great ones side by side, so I built that.
What it does
Screeny is a hand-picked gallery of App Store screenshots from 200+ well-designed iOS apps.
- Browse by category, or by Screenshots, Icons and Mascots
- Open any app to see its full screenshot story in one row, the way it reads on the App Store
- Copy a screenshot straight into Figma, download one or a whole selection, or grab the app icon
- ⌘K search across apps and categories
- Passwordless login (email code or Google) so your bookmarks sync across devices
- Suggest an app; every submission is reviewed by hand
How we built it
Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, TypeScript and Tailwind CSS 4, designed in Figma first and implemented pixel-for-pixel. Prisma with Neon Postgres stores apps, screenshots, submissions and bookmarks. An ingest script pulls apps from Apple's lookup API, converts images to WebP with sharp, and stores them in Cloudflare R2. Clerk handles passwordless auth. Motion, cmdk and Vaul power the motion, command palette and drawers, with synthesized UI sounds and a mute switch.
Challenges we ran into
- Figma exports
opsz 14but renders DM Sans with automatic optical sizing, so my headline came out 10% too wide until I stopped forcing the axis - Returning to the exact card after closing an app broke because of
content-visibility; I fixed it by anchoring to the card and re-aligning after the browser's own scroll restoration - Clipboards only accept PNG, so copying needed a same-origin image route plus a canvas re-encode
- Neon cold starts timing out, Prisma's engine locked on Windows, and Clerk's new v7 API with captcha in custom flows
AI assistance
I designed Screeny in Figma, hand-picked every app, and made the product and design decisions. I used Claude Code (an AI coding assistant) heavily during development: to implement features from my designs, debug issues like Neon cold starts and Clerk's new auth API, audit accessibility, and test the app in a real browser. I reviewed and directed every change, and can walk through how each part works.
Who it's for: indie iOS developers, designers and small teams creating App Store screenshots who want real, high-quality examples to learn from.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- 200+ apps curated by hand
- Fully responsive from 320px phones up, with a custom mobile menu and asoinspo-style app pages
- WCAG AA contrast, full keyboard support, screen-reader labels and reduced-motion support throughout
- Bookmarks that move from your browser into your account when you log in
What we learned
Design engineering is mostly details: optical sizing, scroll restoration, focus management, and motion that feels fast without being noisy. Accessibility is far easier to build in from the start than to bolt on later.
What's next for Screeny
Own domain with verified Google branding, X login, more apps and categories, higher-resolution screenshots, Mac apps, and collections you can share.
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