Video thumbnail and cover sizes for every platform in 2026

YouTube wants a 16:9 thumbnail (3840×2160 recommended, at least 640 pixels wide) as JPG or PNG; Shorts and Reels covers are 9:16. Instagram takes a JPEG cover up to 8 MB and crops the centre square for your grid. TikTok's posting API accepts no cover image at all — only the position of a frame in the video — and without one, the cover is your first frame.

Cover and thumbnail rules by platform

YouTube: bigger than you remember, and a verified account

If you learned "1280×720" as the YouTube thumbnail size, the help page has moved on: it now recommends 3840×2160 for videos and 2160×3840 for Shorts, with 640 pixels as the minimum width (height for Shorts). JPG and PNG are the named formats. The file can be 2 MB when uploaded from the mobile app and 50 MB from a computer — the API allows 50 MB too.

Two rules catch people out:

• Verification. Uploading your own thumbnail needs a verified YouTube account. Without it, an API call to set a thumbnail fails with a permission error, and the video keeps an automatic frame.

• Shorts. Custom thumbnails for Shorts can currently only be added in YouTube Studio on a computer, not from the app.

Instagram: one image, two crops

A Reel's cover is shown in two places with two different crops. In the Reels tab it is 9:16; on your profile grid, if the Reel is shared to the feed, Instagram uses "the middle most 1:1 square" of the cover. If you upload a cover in another ratio, Instagram first crops it to the middle 9:16. Text placed near the top or bottom of the cover is visible in the Reels tab and cut off in the grid.

Without a cover image, Instagram uses the frame at the chosen offset — by default the first frame of the video. A video that opens on a black fade gets a black cover. More on Reels files in our Instagram Reels specs.

TikTok: the cover is a frame, not an image

TikTok's Content Posting API has no field for a cover image. It lets a posting tool pick which frame becomes the cover, by its position in milliseconds; "if the value is missing or invalid, the cover is set to the first frame of the uploaded video." So on TikTok you don't design a cover — you choose the best moment of the video.

Facebook and LinkedIn: optional, barely documented

Facebook's Page video API accepts a thumbnail image uploaded with the video, but documents no size or ratio for it. LinkedIn's Videos API lets you upload an optional thumbnail; without one, LinkedIn may generate a system thumbnail. For both, a 9:16 or 16:9 image matching the video's own ratio is the safe choice.

One cover design that works almost everywhere

• Make it 9:16, at least 1080×1920 (2160×3840 if you want YouTube's recommended Shorts size).

• Keep the key element in the centre square — roughly the middle 1080×1080 of a 1080×1920 image — so the Instagram grid shows it.

• Save it as JPEG under 2 MB. That fits Instagram's 8 MB, YouTube's mobile limit and every network that documents nothing.

• Make a separate 16:9 thumbnail for long-form YouTube videos; a vertical cover doesn't fit there.

• Choose a good cover frame for TikTok, and open the video on a strong image in case you leave it open.

When you publish through Uplonic, the video's thumbnail is sent as the custom cover to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. If a network can't take it — an unverified YouTube account, for example — the video still goes out with the network's automatic frame. For TikTok, which takes a frame instead of an image, the cover frame you choose is sent with the post. The file limits for the videos themselves are in our social media video specs overview.