mockvid
Why the gallery video matters more than the tagline
Before anyone reads your tagline, they see the first gallery asset. On a page full of competing launches, a static screenshot reads as "not quite ready," even when the product is solid. An animated gallery item, GIF or video, is the one thing that makes a visitor stop scrolling long enough to actually read what you built. It doesn't need to be flashy. It needs to move enough to signal that a real product, not a landing page mockup, is behind the link.
What Product Hunt actually accepts
- Gallery images: up to 3000×2000px, JPG, PNG or GIF.
- Gallery video: MP4, ideally under 50MB, autoplay-muted in the gallery.
- First slot matters most: whatever you upload first is what shows in the compact feed view before someone opens your listing.
A cinematic 3D device mockup of your product satisfies both formats at once: export it as a GIF for the lightweight gallery thumbnail, and as an MP4 for the full listing.
The 15-minute version
- Paste your live URL. Mockvid opens your landing page in a real browser and records the scroll, so the video shows the actual product, not a slide deck about it.
- Pick a motion preset. Something with a confident, deliberate camera move reads better in a small gallery thumbnail than a busy one. Preview it before committing.
- Export GIF and MP4. One capture, two formats, both sized for the gallery.
- Upload the video as your first gallery asset, ahead of any static screenshots.
Your landing page is already built.Turn it into a launch video before your submission deadline.
Paste your URL →Timing, if you're launching soon
Product Hunt days run midnight to midnight Pacific Time, and early votes compound: a strong first two hours after 12:01am PT tends to carry the rest of the day's ranking. That means your launch video needs to exist before that window opens, not the morning of. Render it the day before, so launch morning is for replying to comments, not waiting on an export.
What to show in the first 3 seconds
Whatever your hero section leads with is what the video should lead with too; the gallery autoplay is muted and often glanced at for less time than it takes to read this sentence. If your hero section already makes the value clear in a glance, the mockup video inherits that. If it doesn't, that's a landing page problem a launch video can't fix on its own.
Frequently asked
Do I need a voiceover or captions?
No. Gallery previews autoplay muted, so anything you'd say in a voiceover has to be visible on screen already, in the site itself. Save narrated demos for a separate embedded video in your "Maker comment," if you want one.
Should the video show scrolling the whole page, or just the hero?
For most launches, a short scroll through the hero and one or two key sections works better than the full page: it's more watchable in a loop and doesn't require the viewer to wait for the part that matters.
What if my product is mobile-only or has no marketing site yet?
Capture both desktop and mobile in the same mockup so reviewers can judge the mobile experience without switching devices themselves. If there's genuinely no site yet, a Figma prototype works the same way.
Founders launching more than one product a year, or iterating on the same one, may also want to see how pricing scales on the founders page.