Resize an image for a YouTube channel banner

Resize any image to exactly 2560×1440 for a YouTube channel banner, free and in your browser.

Set exact pixels, or pick a preset for a platform.

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    What size is a YouTube channel banner?

    2560×1440 pixels, which is 16:9. 2560×1440 is the full canvas, and almost none of it is reliably visible. YouTube crops the banner differently for a phone, a desktop browser and a television, and the only region every device shows is roughly 1546×423 in the middle. The large canvas exists so the television crop has pixels to use.

    The thing that catches people out

    Keep your name, logo and anything you need read inside that centre strip. Put text near an edge and it survives on a desktop and is gone on a phone, which is where most of your viewers are. Fill and crop is the right mode here, because the shape almost never matches what you started with.

    What a YouTube channel banner does to it afterwards

    This is the one image on any platform with a genuinely difficult brief, because YouTube shows a different crop of it on every device. The full 2560x1440 is only ever seen on a television. A desktop browser shows a 2560x423 strip through the middle, and a phone shows just 1546x423 of that. Everything that must be readable has to sit inside the central 1546x423 safe area, and the rest is decoration that most visitors will never see. Design for the phone crop and let the television get the generous version.

    What the crop takes off

    The same 16:9 shape as a thumbnail, so the crop is the same quarter off the top and bottom. The difference is the width: 2560 pixels is wider than a good many source images, and anything narrower gets enlarged to fill it. Enlarging invents nothing, so a 1200-pixel image stretched to 2560 will look soft on the one device that shows the whole thing.

    Questions about a YouTube channel banner

    Why does my banner look completely different on my phone?

    Because YouTube crops it rather than scaling it. The file is 2560x1440, a television shows all of it, a desktop browser shows a 2560x423 strip through the middle, and a phone shows only the central 1546x423. They are three different pictures cut from one file. Nothing you can do at upload changes that, so the working method is to design inside the 1546x423 middle and treat everything outside it as background.

    Does the channel logo cover part of it?

    Not on the banner itself, unlike most other platforms. Your channel picture sits below the banner on desktop and to the left of the channel name on mobile, so the banner is not obscured the way an X header or a LinkedIn cover is. What does sit over it on a television is nothing at all, which is why the full 2560x1440 is worth filling with something rather than leaving as a colour.

    Why does the banner look right on a phone and wrong on a television?

    Because YouTube shows a different slice of the same file on every device, and only the television gets all 2560 by 1440 of it. A phone sees a narrow central band, a desktop browser a wider one, and a TV sees the parts you never checked. Anything that has to be read - a name, a schedule, a handle - belongs in the central 1546 by 423 region that is visible everywhere. The rest is decoration some viewers will see and others will not.

    There is a file size limit too

    YouTube channel banners are capped at 6 MB, and that is the limit people hit once the dimensions are right, because resizing changes the pixels and not the bytes. Use the Compress tab and set a target size.

    Other sizes

    Or any dimensions, or compress.