You set a new profile picture, it looks great in the preview, and then a friend’s phone shows the top of your head cut off. Every platform crops differently, and “looks fine here” is no guarantee. Here are the sizes that actually work, and how to stop fighting the crop.
Short answer: For avatars, upload a square around 400×400 px and it’s sharp almost everywhere. Cover and banner images each need their own aspect ratio — resize a copy per platform with the Image Resizer, then crop to fit.
Avatar / profile picture sizes
Avatars are shown small and usually masked to a circle or rounded square, cropped from the center. The golden rules: upload a square, and go a little larger than the display size so it stays crisp.
| Platform | Recommended upload |
|---|---|
| 320×320 stored (upload 1080×1080 for retina) | |
| X (Twitter) | 400×400 |
| display ~170×170 (upload ~400×400 square) | |
| 400×400 | |
| TikTok | 200×200 min (upload 720×720) |
| YouTube | 800×800 |
| Discord / Slack | 512×512 (Slack ideal 1024×1024) |
A single 400×400 square covers most of these comfortably; bump to 800×800 if you want one master file that’s future-proof. Because the crop is centered, keep your face — or logo — away from the edges.
Cover, banner, and header sizes
This is where one image can’t rule them all, because the shapes are wildly different:
| Platform | Cover / banner | Shape |
|---|---|---|
| Facebook cover | 851×315 | wide |
| X header | 1500×500 | very wide (3:1) |
| LinkedIn banner (personal) | 1584×396 | very wide (4:1) |
| LinkedIn company | 1128×191 | ultra-wide |
| YouTube channel art | 2560×1440 | wide, huge “safe area” caveat |
YouTube is the trap: it displays your 2560×1440 art cropped differently on TV, desktop, and phone, so keep the important content inside the central 1546×423 “safe area.” For the others, design for the ratio, not just the width.
The two mistakes everyone makes
- Uploading a non-square avatar. The platform crops to center and lops off your sides. Crop it square first with the Image Cropper so you control what stays.
- Uploading something enormous. A 12-megapixel photo as an avatar gets aggressively re-compressed by the platform, often looking worse than a right-sized upload. Resize to the target dimensions before posting.
The resize-once workflow
- Start from your highest-quality original.
- Square-crop it for avatars with the Image Cropper; make a per-ratio crop for each banner.
- Resize each to the platform’s pixel size with the Image Resizer.
- If any file is still heavy, run it through the Image Compressor so it uploads fast and dodges heavy re-compression — see how to reduce image file size.
Everything above runs in your browser, so your photos never get uploaded to a middleman just to be resized.
Sizes change; the habits don’t
Platforms tweak these dimensions constantly, so treat any exact number as “check before a rebrand.” What doesn’t change: square avatars, centered subjects, right-sized files, one crop per aspect ratio. Nail those four and your face stays in frame no matter whose screen it lands on. While you’re polishing the profile, the social media character limits guide covers the text half of the same job.