Social media image & video size checker
Every platform crops differently and lays its own buttons over your content. Choose a format below to get the recommended export size, the aspect ratio, and where the 'safe zone' is so your message survives the interface.
Recommended size
1080 × 1920 px
- Aspect ratio
- 9:16
Keep captions, your logo and any call-to-action within the central 1080 × 1420 area — Instagram lays the username, audio strip and action buttons over roughly the top and bottom 15%.
The fastest way to look amateur on social media is to have your caption clipped by the platform's own buttons. Each app reserves slices of the screen for its interface — TikTok's action rail down the right, Instagram's reply bar across the bottom of a Story, YouTube's duration stamp in the thumbnail corner — and those slices change depending on the format. Designing to the raw canvas size isn't enough; you have to design to the part that stays visible.
This checker gives you both numbers that matter: the export size to hand your design tool, and a plain-English note on where the safe zone sits for that specific format. Build to the recommended pixels, then keep your text, logo and key subject inside the safe area, and your post will read correctly whether it's seen on a tiny phone or a desktop preview.
If you only remember one rule, make it this: centre the things that must be seen, and leave breathing room top and bottom on anything vertical. The middle of the frame is almost never covered, so a headline parked dead-centre survives every crop the algorithms throw at it.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a 'safe zone'?
- It's the part of your frame that the app's own interface never covers. Buttons, captions, profile rings and progress bars all sit on top of your content, so anything important — text, faces, logos, a call-to-action — needs to stay inside the safe zone to avoid being hidden.
- Why 1080 × 1920 for almost every vertical video?
- It's the 9:16 full-screen ratio of a phone and the resolution every major app re-encodes to. Exporting at 1080 × 1920 means the platform does the least re-compression, which keeps your video looking crisp instead of blocky.
- Can I just upload a bigger image and let the app resize it?
- You can, but you lose control of the crop and quality. Matching the recommended size means you decide what's in frame and the platform compresses less. Oversized uploads are also slower and more likely to be aggressively re-encoded.
- Do these sizes change?
- Occasionally — platforms tweak their layouts. The pixel sizes here are stable, widely-used standards; the safe-zone margins are deliberately a little generous so your content stays clear even after a minor app update.
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