Localizing App Store Screenshots for Arabic and Hebrew (RTL)

Arabic and Hebrew are read from right to left, so the eye enters a screenshot at the top right. A caption that simply swaps English words for Arabic words, while staying left-aligned next to a left-to-right app screen, reads as an unfinished translation.

There are two separate layers to fix. The app UI inside the device frame should come from your app actually running in Arabic or Hebrew. The marketing overlay around it (headline, subtitle, badges, arrows) is designed by you and has to be mirrored by you.

Start from real RTL screens, not a flipped image of the English screens. Apple notes that system-provided UI frameworks support right-to-left by default (opens in a new tab), so standard components flip automatically when the device language is Arabic or Hebrew.

On Android, mirroring only happens if the app opts in. The Android localization guide (opens in a new tab) requires the supportsRtl attribute to be set to true in the manifest, supports RTL mirroring on Android 4.2 (API level 17) and higher, and asks you to use start and end layout attributes instead of left and right.

• Set the test device or simulator language to Arabic or Hebrew before capturing, so navigation, tab bars and back buttons appear in their mirrored positions.
• Look for hard-coded left and right margins, icons or gradients that did not flip; they show up clearly in screenshots and hint at real bugs.
• Fill demo content with realistic Arabic or Hebrew names, messages and prices rather than leaving English sample data in an RTL shell.
• Never horizontally flip an English screenshot to fake RTL: text becomes mirrored glyphs, and photos, logos and clocks turn into wrong images.

Apple's right-to-left guidelines (opens in a new tab) give a clear rule set that transfers well to store artwork. Mirror anything that expresses reading order, progress or forward and backward motion. Keep anything that depicts a real object, a brand or a universal mark exactly as it is.

Apple also says to align a paragraph of three or more lines by its own language (opens in a new tab). If a slide quotes an English review inside an Arabic layout, keep that quote left-aligned and right-align the Arabic headline around it.

Hebrew uses Western digits (0-9). Apple's guidance is that Arabic text might use either Western or Eastern Arabic numerals (opens in a new tab), and usage varies by country and region. The W3C Arabic layout requirements (opens in a new tab) describe European digits in western Arab regions and Arabic-Indic digits in eastern regions.

• Match the digits your app shows in its own Arabic UI, so the caption and the screen inside the frame agree.
• Never reverse the order of digits within a number: "4.8", "24/7" or "10,000" keep their digit order even inside RTL text.
• Do reverse sequences that express direction, such as a rating scale or a numbered stepper drawn in the overlay.
• Check prices and percentages carefully; a currency sign or percent sign can land on the unexpected side of the number.

Most RTL captions mix scripts: an Arabic or Hebrew sentence with an English product name, a feature name such as "AI" or "Pro", or a number. Text renderers order these runs with the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm, and the W3C explains that neutral characters such as punctuation take the base direction (opens in a new tab) when they sit between runs of opposite direction.

The typical failure is a caption that ends with a Latin brand name followed by "!" or ".", where the mark jumps to the wrong side of the sentence. It happens when the text box has a left-to-right base direction, so fix the direction of the text box rather than moving characters by hand.

• Set the caption's text direction to RTL (or its language to ar or he) in your design tool instead of only right-aligning it.
• Keep brand names and trademarks in Latin script unless your brand has an official Arabic or Hebrew form.
• Read every mixed caption aloud with a native speaker: word order, the brand name position and the final punctuation should all feel natural.
• Watch parentheses and quotation marks around Latin words; they are neutral characters and are the most common to render reversed.

Pick a typeface that actually contains Arabic or Hebrew glyphs, ideally from the same family as your Latin headline. If the font lacks the script, the renderer falls back to a system font mid-caption, and for Arabic a font without proper shaping can show letters disconnected.

• Arabic is cursive: letters join and change form by position, as described in the W3C Arabic layout requirements (opens in a new tab). Do not add letter-spacing or tracking, which breaks the joins.
• Neither Arabic nor Hebrew has uppercase letters, so all-caps styling has no effect. Apple suggests increasing RTL text by about 2 points (opens in a new tab) when it sits next to all-caps Latin text.
• Arabic and Hebrew both use marks above and below letters (vowel points and diacritics); give captions enough line height that nothing is clipped.
• Keep headlines short. Google Play advises that taglines should not take up more than 20% of the image (opens in a new tab), which applies to RTL captions just as it does to English ones.

Each store has a single Arabic and a single Hebrew listing language, but the codes differ. Google Play still uses the legacy code iw-IL for Hebrew, which is easy to miss when you map files to listing languages.

Apple notes that a newly added localization uses the primary language's screenshots (opens in a new tab) until you replace them. Adding Arabic metadata without uploading Arabic screenshots therefore shows English, left-to-right artwork next to right-to-left text.

Arabic and Hebrew are both among StoreLocale's 32 target languages. Text detection and translation cost no credits, and brand marks and acronyms are kept untranslated, so you can review Arabic or Hebrew captions per locale before spending anything. See app screenshot localization for the full workflow.

The AI repaint replaces each detected string in place with a generative image model. It does not mirror your layout: position, alignment and the order of slides stay as designed, and caption text layers share their alignment across locales. Caption layers also have no right-to-left text-direction setting, and the built-in font families are Latin, so check mixed Arabic or Hebrew captions with Latin words or final punctuation closely, or set them in a design tool that supports RTL direction and a font with the script.

Quality tiers are Standard (1 credit, 1K), Pro (2 credits, 2K) and Ultra (4 credits, 4K), and unchanged assets are not billed again when you re-export. Exports are PNG files organized by platform and locale; you upload them to App Store Connect and Play Console yourself. Details are on the pricing page.

1. The app UI inside each frame was captured in Arabic or Hebrew, with navigation and back buttons on the mirrored side.
2. Captions are right-aligned and placed in the mirrored position; any English paragraph stays left-aligned.
3. Arrows, progress indicators and numbered sequences inside each slide read from right to left; slides are uploaded in their normal 1 to n order.
4. Logos, photos, video frames, checkmarks and device frames are not flipped.
5. Digits in each number keep their order, and the numeral style matches the app's Arabic UI.
6. Latin brand names and final punctuation sit on the correct side of every mixed caption.
7. The font contains the script, Arabic letters join correctly, and nothing is clipped above or below the line.
8. Files are mapped to the right listing languages: Arabic (ar-SA) and Hebrew (he) in App Store Connect, ar and iw-IL in Play Console.
9. A native speaker has approved every slide, including AI-repainted ones.

For the checks that apply to every language, such as text expansion and file naming, use the screenshot localization checklist.