Chart position — tracked daily by LaunchShots
Screenshot style breakdown
Sampled from 4 of Hacker News by Emerge's App Store screenshots — background, accent and theme, measured by LaunchShots (not something Apple publishes).
#040404 bg
#272727
#EC6C14 accent
#FFFFFF text
Reading the caption text from the screenshots in your browser…
Screenshots
iPad screenshots
Icon palette
About this app
The best way to read Hacker News Introducing a free, open-source HN client designed to give you the best Hacker News experience. Developed by Emerge Tools (a Y Combinator company) in partnership with Supergooey. This app is a labor of love, crafted by a team with deep expertise in mobile app development. Why choose this HN client? • Native iOS Experience: We believe in the power of native apps. Hacker News for iOS is designed to offer a fast, smooth, and intuitive user experience that only a truly native app can provide. • Open Source and Community-Driven: The app is completely open source, inviting developers to contribute, learn, and improve it together. We want to give back to the HN community, which has been instrumental in our growth. • Performance & Efficiency: Leveraging Emerge’s newest tool, Reaper, we’ve optimized Hacker News for iOS to be as lean as possible, stripping away …
App details
What you can learn from Hacker News by Emerge
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 8 screenshots above are Hacker News by Emerge's answers to those questions — they're public, they're real, and they made it through Apple's review.
What the numbers say: Hacker News by Emerge runs a dark set with one background colour (#040404) carried across every screenshot — the listing reads as a single poster when the shots sit side by side in search results. The accent colour we picked up, #EC6C14, 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.