Chart position — tracked daily by LaunchShots
Screenshot style breakdown
Sampled from 6 of The Sydney Morning Herald's App Store screenshots — background, accent and theme, measured by LaunchShots (not something Apple publishes).
#040C34 bg
#272E50
#DCCC4C accent
#FFFFFF text
Screenshots
iPad screenshots
Icon palette
About this app
Get straight to the stories that matter with the Herald app. Top Stories and push notifications keep you up to date with breaking headlines while our Podcast catalogue lets you tune into thought-provoking audio storytelling and discussions from our newsroom. My News lets you customise your feed, showing the topics you're interested in, in the order you want them. The app is free to download. You can unlock unlimited access to all content with a Starter Digital subscription through the App Store. To unlock premium features such as Today's Paper and puzzles including Daily Crosswords and Daily Sudoku, you can subscribe to Premium Digital via in-app purchase. Additional information about Apple subscriptions: - Purchase of an auto-renewable, monthly subscription is required to access content on The Sydney Morning Herald app - Starter Digital subscriptions are available for AU$25.99 per …
App details
What you can learn from The Sydney Morning Herald
Every shipping app on the App Store has gone through the same decisions you're working through right now: which screenshot goes first, what caption sits over it, which device frame to show, what color the background should be. The 11 screenshots above are The Sydney Morning Herald's answers to those questions — they're public, they're real, and they made it through Apple's review.
What the numbers say: The Sydney Morning Herald runs a dark set where the background shifts from screenshot to screenshot (first shot #040C34) — each image has to stand on its own, so the captions carry more of the story. The accent colour we picked up, #DCCC4C, is the one to reuse for badges, arrows and highlighted words if you borrow this look. Hit Use this style to open the editor with these exact colours and drop your own screenshot in.
Notice the first screenshot in particular. It's the one users see in search results and on the product page, and it's where most apps spend their best caption and tightest design. Look at the proportion of background to phone, where the text sits, what one thing the image is trying to communicate.
Want to see how other News apps approach the same problem? Browse more News apps in the showcase.
Take what works into your own screenshots
Open LaunchShots and design your App Store & Google Play screenshots — pick a device frame, drop captions, ship in minutes. Free, in your browser.
Open the screenshot editor →Apps with a similar look
Closest background + accent colours among the listings we've analysed — useful when you want to see the same palette handled by a different team.