YouTube Banner Size and Free Resizer With the Safe Area

YouTube's current help page gives the safe area as 1235 x 338 pixels at the minimum dimension, so on a 2048 x 1152 banner. That is 60% of the width and 29% of the height, in the middle both ways.

Most guides give a different number, 1546 x 423. That one comes from YouTube too: its 2019 channel art page, saved by the Internet Archive, listed a 1546 x 423 safe area for the 2560 x 1440 banner. Divide both out and you get the same share, about 60% by 29%. The two numbers describe the same box at two banner sizes, so neither guide is wrong.

The resizer scales the current figure, which gives a 1544 x 423 box on a 2560 x 1440 banner. Two pixels of width either way make no visible difference. If you build the banner in Figma or Canva instead, a centered guide of 1546 x 423 is fine.

Inside the box goes whatever has to be read: the channel name, a few words on what you post, and your upload schedule if you keep one, which YouTube itself suggests in its banner tips. Outside it, use background that still works when cut, such as a texture, a sky or a blurred part of a photo. A word or a face that crosses the box edge can be cut in half on a phone.

Studio shows the crop before anything goes live. After you pick the file, YouTube's steps say to select a preview and change the crop, then click Done and Publish. Look at every preview it offers, not just the first one.

The previews are small, so check the real thing too. After publishing, open your channel in the YouTube app on your phone, then in a browser window that you make narrower and wider. The words should stay whole the entire time. If you have a smart TV or a streaming stick, open the channel there as well, since it is the only view that shows the edges of the picture.

Channel links are not drawn on the banner. YouTube shows your first link in the profile section near the Subscribe button and the rest when a viewer clicks to see more, so you don't need to keep a corner free for them. Add links in Studio under Customization, Profile, Links. A web address typed into the banner picture cannot be clicked, so only put one there if it is short enough to type.

The YouTube banner aspect ratio is 16:9. 2560 divided by 1440 and 2048 divided by 1152 both come to 1.78, the shape of a widescreen video. A phone photo is usually 4:3, a logo is often square, and neither fits without a change.

There are two honest fixes. Fill crops the picture until it is 16:9, which suits photos: drag the subject into the safe area and let the top and bottom go. Fit shrinks the whole picture into the frame and fills the bands at the sides, which suits a logo or a wide panorama you don't want cut.

What not to do is stretch the picture to 16:9. A square logo pulled to 2560 x 1440 comes out 1.78 times as wide as it should be. The resizer has no stretch option.

YouTube takes a banner of 6 MB or smaller. You will rarely hit that with a JPG. A PNG of a photo can pass it, because PNG keeps every pixel exactly and photos do not compress well that way.

We tested this on the resizer on 3 November 2026. A 4032 x 3024 JPG of 7.1 MB, filled with random noise so it would be as hard to compress as any photo, came out as a 2560 x 1440 JPG of 1.4 MB at the first quality setting. The same picture saved as PNG was 7.4 MB, and the tool marked it as over the 6 MB limit. A flat 1280 x 720 graphic with one word on it came out as a 29 KB file, with a warning that it was below YouTube's minimum and would look soft. We did not upload these test files to YouTube.

For JPG, the tool starts at quality 0.92 and steps down to 0.4 at most, stopping as soon as the file fits under 6 MB. It uses the browser's own canvas export, so the picture never leaves your computer. For PNG there is no quality setting to lower, so if a PNG is too big the fix is to switch to JPG.

PNG is the better pick for flat artwork: a logo, large text and a few solid colors. Those files stay small and the edges of the letters stay sharp. For anything with a photo in it, choose JPG.

A banner only has a size in pixels. The same 2560 x 1440 file is a few centimeters wide on a phone and over a meter wide on a big TV.

Some design apps ask for inches or centimeters plus a resolution. At 300 pixels per inch, 2560 x 1440 pixels is 8.53 x 4.8 inches, or 21.67 x 12.19 centimeters, since an inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters by definition. At 72 pixels per inch it is 35.56 x 20 inches. Both settings export the same 2560 x 1440 file, and the pixel count is the only thing YouTube reads.

Sign in to YouTube Studio. In the left menu choose Customization, then Profile. Next to the banner image, click Change and pick your file. Select a preview to adjust the crop, click Done, then Publish. These are the steps YouTube gives.

Official Artist Channels work a little differently. YouTube says their banner is only used on computers and phones, and the banner for TV and YouTube Music is set separately under Profile in Studio, with Save at the top right instead of Publish.

You can change the banner as often as you like. YouTube's tips page says the banner "can change with you". A banner that names your upload days goes out of date the week you change them, so update both together.

YouTube's own page suggests Preview on a Mac or Photos on Windows. In Preview, crop first: drag a box with Rectangular Selection and click Crop. Then choose Tools, then Adjust Size, keep Scale proportionally on and set the width to 2560. The hard part is the crop, because Apple's guide gives no way to type an exact 16:9 box, so the height often lands a few pixels off 1440.

Windows Photos can crop to preset aspect ratios, as Microsoft's guide shows, but that guide does not cover changing the pixel size. Neither app draws YouTube's safe area, so check the result in the resizer above or measure the center box yourself.

In Figma, Canva or Photoshop, start a 2560 x 1440 canvas, add a centered 1546 x 423 rectangle as a guide and hide it before you export. YouTube's tips page mentions Canva by name as a popular place to make banners.

Thumbnails follow different rules: YouTube now recommends 3840 x 2160 pixels, and the file limit depends on whether you upload from a phone or a computer. The YouTube thumbnail size tool resizes to those sizes the same way. For vertical 9:16 pictures there is the Instagram story size tool. Every other network is in the social media image sizes guide, and limits for titles and captions are in social media character limits.

Spreadcast does not make channel banners, and the resizer above is free with no sign up. What Spreadcast does is the posting that comes after: it designs posts in your brand, writes a caption for each network and schedules them to YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Telegram and Discord from one calendar. If you work in Claude or ChatGPT, the YouTube MCP server lets your assistant draft and schedule those posts.

If you make an app, start free with your App Store link. Spreadcast reads the listing and makes three posts from it on the free plan, before you pay anything. For any other channel or brand, the plans page lists what each plan includes.