screenshots

name	screenshots
description	Play Store screenshot pipeline — regenerate localized screenshots, copy them into fastlane metadata, and upload to Play Store. Covers the smoke-only git tracking split and the post-upload working-tree restore.
when_to_use	When regenerating, refreshing, or uploading Play Store screenshots, when smoke-locale PNGs need re-rendering after a UI change, or when working in fastlane/ or app/src/screenshotTest*/.
effort	low

Play Store Screenshots

What's tracked in git

• Smoke locales (6) — en-US, de-DE, ja-JP, ar, zh-CN, pt-BR. PNGs under fastlane/metadata/android/<locale>/images/phoneScreenshots/ are committed for these locales only.
• Other 33 locales — gitignored. Generated on demand for upload, not committed.

The .gitignore rule (lines following app/src/screenshotTest*/reference/) ignores all phone screenshots and !-includes only the 6 smoke locales. The smoke set matches SMOKE_LOCALES in fastlane/generate_screenshots.sh.

The --smoke mode of generate_screenshots.sh is also useful for fast UI iteration on representative LTR/RTL/CJK locales without rendering all 39.

Why smoke-only

• Reviewable diffs — a screenshot refresh that only touches 6 × 6 = 36 PNGs is reviewable; 234 PNGs is not.
• Repo size — keeps binary churn out of git history.
• Fastlane behavior — supply skips locales with no local screenshot files, so unpushed locales keep whatever Play Store currently has. This is current Fastlane uploader behavior, not a Play Store guarantee.

Full regeneration + upload (on demand)

1. Generate all 39 locales:

   ./fastlane/generate_screenshots.sh
   

   Batched gradle screenshot rendering (~20 batches, ~10–15 min). The script exits non-zero if the final PNG count differs from the expected 234 (39 × 6).

2. Copy rendered PNGs into fastlane metadata dirs:

   ./fastlane/copy_screenshots.sh --clean
   

   Output: fastlane/metadata/android/<locale>/images/phoneScreenshots/*.png for all 39 locales.

3. Verify count before upload:

   find fastlane/metadata/android -path "*/images/phoneScreenshots/*.png" | wc -l   # expect 234
   

4. Upload to Play Store:

   cd fastlane && bundle exec fastlane screenshots_only
   

   The lane invokes remove_unsupported_languages.sh first, which deletes ckb-IR and ku-TR translation dirs (and harmlessly errors on the other 14 absent dirs in its list).

5. Restore working tree post-upload:

   git clean -fdX fastlane/metadata/android      # removes only ignored files (the 33 non-smoke screenshot sets)
   git checkout -- fastlane/metadata/android/ckb-IR fastlane/metadata/android/ku-TR
   

   git clean -fdX removes only gitignored files, so tracked screenshots, translations, and listing assets are untouched. The git checkout restores the two translation dirs the lane deleted.

After the first smoke-only upload

Spot-check at least one non-smoke locale (e.g. fr-FR) in Play Console → Store listing → that locale, and confirm screenshots are still present. This validates the "Fastlane skips locales with no local files" assumption against current Play Store behavior. If non-smoke locales lose their screenshots, the workflow needs adjustment (e.g. always upload the full 39 set, or revert the gitignore split).

When smoke screenshots change

Re-rendering the 6 smoke locales is part of the normal --smoke test loop:

./fastlane/generate_screenshots.sh --smoke
./fastlane/copy_screenshots.sh --clean

Resulting changes to the 6 smoke locale PNGs go into a normal commit (typically Apps: / Permissions: / General: depending on what UI changed).