Social media platforms are not forgiving with wrongly sized images. Upload a landscape photo to an Instagram story slot and it gets cropped to a vertical frame, probably cutting off your subject. Use a square image as a Facebook cover photo and it gets stretched or letterboxed in ways that look unprofessional. Get the LinkedIn article header wrong and the platform crops it differently on mobile than on desktop, and your carefully composed graphic loses its text.

The dimensions change more often than people expect — platforms quietly update their specs, introduce new content formats, and adjust how images are displayed on different devices. This guide covers the current correct dimensions for every major placement on the major platforms, plus the format and compression recommendations that keep your images looking sharp after the platform recompresses them on upload.

A Note on Platform Compression

Before the platform-by-platform breakdown, one thing worth understanding: every social media platform recompresses your images when you upload them. No matter how carefully you size and export, the platform applies its own compression algorithm. This is why images sometimes look noticeably worse on social media than they did before upload — you're seeing two rounds of compression, yours and the platform's.

The way to minimize this: upload at the recommended dimensions in JPG at 80–85% quality, or PNG for graphics that need crisp edges. Uploading at a much higher resolution than recommended doesn't necessarily improve quality — the platform still downscales and recompresses — and uploading at lower quality gives the platform's algorithm worse source material to work with. Hit the recommended dimensions, use reasonable quality, and the platform compression has the best possible input to work from.

Instagram

Instagram supports multiple aspect ratios depending on content type, and uses different cropping in the feed grid vs. the full-view display.

  • Square posts: 1080×1080px (1:1). The safest format if you're unsure — it displays consistently in the grid and at full size without cropping.
  • Portrait posts: 1080×1350px (4:5). This is actually Instagram's recommended format for feed posts because it takes up more vertical screen space, which means more attention. The grid crops it to square, but the full feed view shows the full 4:5 frame.
  • Landscape posts: 1080×566px (1.91:1). Displays with white borders on mobile when viewed at full size.
  • Stories and Reels: 1080×1920px (9:16). Full-screen vertical format. Keep important content in the central safe zone — approximately 1080×1420px — to avoid UI elements (profile name at top, action buttons at bottom) overlapping your content.
  • Profile photo: 320×320px minimum, displayed as a circle. Upload at least 400×400px for sharp rendering on high-DPI displays.

Facebook

  • Feed photo posts: 1200×630px for landscape, 1080×1080px for square. Facebook accepts a wide range of sizes but these dimensions perform consistently across desktop and mobile feeds.
  • Cover photo (personal profile): 851×315px on desktop, displayed at 640×360px on mobile. Keep key content centered and away from edges, which get cropped on mobile.
  • Cover photo (page): 820×312px on desktop, 640×360px on mobile. Same safe-zone principle applies.
  • Stories: 1080×1920px (9:16), same as Instagram Stories.
  • Shared link preview image: 1200×630px. This is the image that appears when you share a URL — it comes from the Open Graph image tag on the linked page, not from a separate upload.
  • Profile photo: Displays at 170×170px on desktop. Upload at 400×400px minimum.

LinkedIn

  • Personal profile background: 1584×396px (4:1 ratio). This is wider and shorter than most people expect. Standard landscape photos get heavily cropped — design specifically for this unusual ratio or use a wide abstract graphic.
  • Company page cover: 1128×191px. Even more extreme ratio — essentially a banner. Text-heavy designs work better than photos here.
  • Feed post images: 1200×627px for landscape. LinkedIn displays images in the feed at this ratio; upload wider and it gets cropped.
  • Article header image: 1920×1080px (16:9). Displayed differently on desktop vs. mobile — keep essential content and text centered.
  • Profile photo: Displays at 400×400px. Upload at this size or larger.

X (Twitter)

  • In-stream photos: 1600×900px (16:9) for landscape. X crops images in the timeline to approximately 2:1 ratio — it shows a preview, and users click to see the full image. The auto-crop tends to center on the most visually prominent part of the image using saliency detection.
  • Header image: 1500×500px (3:1). Displays differently on desktop, mobile, and tablet — keep key content in the center third.
  • Profile photo: Displays as a circle, minimum 400×400px recommended.

YouTube

  • Video thumbnails: 1280×720px (16:9). This is one of the most consistent specs across the platform — thumbnails display at this ratio everywhere, from search results to the player to suggested videos. High contrast and large readable text perform better than subtle compositions at thumbnail size.
  • Channel art / banner: 2560×1440px total canvas, but the safe zone for content that's visible on all devices is 1546×423px centered. The outer areas are cropped on smaller screens. Design with this safe zone in mind — put your name, tagline, or key information in the center region only.
  • Profile photo: 800×800px recommended, displayed as a circle.

Pinterest

  • Standard pins: 1000×1500px (2:3). Pinterest is the most consistently vertical platform — tall images perform significantly better than square or landscape images because they occupy more screen space in the masonry feed layout.
  • Square pins: 1000×1000px. Acceptable but not optimal.
  • Infographic pins: 1000×3000px maximum. Pinterest supports very tall images for infographic content.
  • Profile photo: 165×165px, displayed as a circle.
The safe zone principle: For any image that serves as a profile banner or cover photo — Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, X — design with a central safe zone in mind. Platforms display these images at different crop ratios on different devices, and the edges are frequently cut off. Put your name, logo, and key information in the central 60% of the image. The outer 20% on each side should be background or non-essential content that can be cropped without loss.

TikTok

  • Videos and covers: 1080×1920px (9:16), full vertical screen. TikTok is essentially a vertical video platform — landscape content is not natively supported in the main feed and performs poorly.
  • Profile photo: 20×20px minimum display size (though it's displayed larger in some contexts). Upload at 200×200px minimum for quality.

Resizing for Multiple Platforms

If you're regularly creating content for multiple platforms, the most efficient workflow is to start with the largest version you need — typically 1920×1080px or 1080×1920px depending on whether your content is landscape or portrait — and resize down for each platform's requirements. The Social Media Resizer has presets for all of these platforms built in, so you can resize to any platform's exact specifications in a single step without manually entering dimensions each time.

For content that genuinely needs to be composed differently for different platforms — not just resized but reframed — the Crop Image tool lets you crop to specific aspect ratios with precision, so you can create the right composition for each placement rather than letting the platform auto-crop in ways you didn't intend.

Image dimensions are the kind of detail that feels tedious until you post something that gets auto-cropped in the worst possible way and realize the fix was a two-minute resize. Getting them right from the start is the lower-effort path.