Facebook cover photo resizer

How to make a Facebook cover photo

A Facebook cover photo is the wide picture at the top of a profile or Page, partly covered by the round profile picture. Meta’s help gives three different shapes for it. This page makes the 851×315 file Meta recommends, which is also the shape facebook.com actually shows, and previews it with the profile picture where we measured it: bottom left on laptops, bottom middle on phone-size screens.

1. Drop an image. A sample cover is already made from an original 2400×1600 illustration, so you can see the result first.
2. Crop: zoom and slide until the 2.7:1 strip shows what you want, or fit the whole image without cropping. Type a headline if you want one.
3. Check Laptop and Phone browser. On laptops the profile picture covers the bottom-left corner; on phones it covers the middle of the bottom. The tool warns when your text runs under it.
4. Download the 851×315 file, then on Facebook click Edit cover photo, Upload Photo, and Save changes.

What Meta says about cover photo sizes (read October 25, 2026)

Quoted word for word from Facebook’s Help Center, read in a browser on October 25, 2026, signed out.

The dimensions article also has two diagrams. Their labels (read off the images, so not text we could match word for word) are “16:9”, “75% overlaps into the cover photo” and “45% size of screen” for the computer, and “2.4:1”, “40 pixels overlaps into the cover photo” and “96 pixels” for mobile. Gridloom is not affiliated with Meta or Facebook.

Where Meta’s numbers don’t agree

• 16:9, 2.4:1 or 851×315? The same article calls the computer cover 16:9 (1.78:1) and the mobile cover 2.4:1, then recommends an 851×315 file, which is 2.7:1. Those are three different shapes. On facebook.com we measured 2.7:1 at every window width (below), so 851×315 is the one that matches what people see in a browser. We could not measure the apps.
• 400 or 720 pixels? The Page article says covers must be at least 400×150. The personal-profile article says “at least 720 pixels wide”. Every size this tool makes is at least 851 px wide, so both are met.
• How big is the profile picture? Meta says 176×176 on computers, and that is what we measured (a 168 px photo in a 4 px white ring). On a phone-width browser window we measured the same 176 px ring centred over the cover’s bottom edge, with 84 px of it over the cover. Meta’s mobile text says about 40 pixels and its diagram shows the picture at the left, which may describe the app; it isn’t what the mobile-size website did.
• What “100 kilobytes” means. Meta doesn’t say whether that is 100,000 or 102,400 bytes. The tool keeps the 851×315 JPEG under 100,000 bytes, which satisfies both, and it’s a speed tip (“Loads fastest”), not an upload limit.
• Group grey areas. The group article says “The diagram below illustrates the dimensions of the cover photo”, but no diagram loaded on the page we read, so we can’t tell you where Meta’s grey areas are.

What we measured on facebook.com

We opened four public accounts (the NASA, Coca-Cola and New York Times Pages and Mark Zuckerberg’s profile) on www.facebook.com in Chrome, signed out, at 15 window widths from a 320 px phone to a 2,560 px monitor, plus 800–880 px to find where the layout switches. The numbers were the same on all four, apart from one case noted below. The cover box was always exactly 2.7:1: the full window width up to 900 px, then 940×348.14 CSS px, centred, on every larger screen. The picture fills the box’s width; if it is taller than 2.7:1, the owner’s drag decides which strip shows. For an 851×315 file the box shows the whole file (within a fraction of a pixel).

The switch at 880–900 px. At 880 px and narrower, the profile picture moves to the middle and drops 84 px into the cover. On a 390 px phone that circle covers about x 233–618 and everything below y 132 of an 851×315 file. On a 320 px phone it covers x 191–660 from y 92 down. On laptops it sits at the bottom left: x 29–188 from y 259 down. So the corner Meta warns about (“The left side of your cover photo will be partially covered”) is the laptop view; on phone-size screens the middle of the bottom is what gets covered. NASA’s ring sat lower (24 px over the cover instead of 62) because its two-line name pushes it down; a short name gives the 62 px we use.

What stays clear everywhere we measured: the top 90 px of an 851×315 cover, and the strip x 660–756 at the right of centre. Put a name, date or logo there. Add Meta’s 2.4:1 mobile shape and the right 95 px (x 756–851) may be cut too, if the app aligns it left as Meta’s text says.

Why Facebook cover photos look blurry

On every view we loaded, laptop or phone width, at normal or 2× pixel density, the page requested the cover with the size hint ctp=s960x960. We downloaded two of those files: 960×355 (from an original listed as 3366×1246) and 960×422 (original 3089×1357). So the website shows a copy at most 960 px wide, even though the box is 940 CSS px and a 2× laptop screen has 1,880 device pixels across it. That alone makes covers look softer than the file you uploaded on sharp screens, and no upload size changes it. What you can control: start from a big enough image (the status line warns when the tool has to enlarge), and use PNG for flat graphics and text, as Meta suggests. Facebook still converts it; the copies we downloaded were JPEGs.

Bigger uploads are kept: the originals above were listed at up to 3,366 px wide. The 1702×630 and 2553×945 options give Facebook more to work with if its apps or a future layout load a larger copy. We didn’t see the website do that.

Group covers: 1640×856

Meta gives groups their own size: “1,640px by 856px (or 1.91:1 ratio)”. That is much taller than a profile or Page cover, so the same photo crops differently; choose “1640×856 · group cover” in the Size menu and the crop follows. Group pages redirect to a login when signed out, so we couldn’t measure where groups crop or what covers the cover. Keep text away from the edges, as Meta’s grey-area note suggests. Events: Meta’s event article gives no size and we did not measure events, so this tool doesn’t claim one.

Measured on the sample

Sample: an original Gridloom illustration of a made-up farm stand, 2400×1600. Measured in Chrome with this page’s own code. Photos with lots of detail make bigger files; for 851×315 JPEGs the tool lowers the quality step by step until the file is under 100,000 bytes.

How to change your Facebook cover photo

Personal profile: go to your profile, click Edit cover photo at the bottom right of the cover, then Upload Photo. Page: switch into the Page, go to it and click Edit cover photo the same way. Meta’s Page article says: “Click Upload Photo to upload a photo from your computer.” After choosing the file you can drag it up or down. With a file from this page there is nothing to drag, because it is already the shape facebook.com shows. Then click Save changes. Groups: on the group, click Edit at the bottom right of the cover.

What we did not check

• The Facebook apps for iPhone and Android, and the signed-in website: all measurements are from the signed-out website. Meta’s 2.4:1 and “approximately 40 pixels” may describe the app; we show them as Meta states them.
• Group and event pages (login required signed out), cover videos, and Facebook’s upload size limit (not given in the articles we read).
• Whether Facebook crops a file wider than 2.7:1 from the middle or the left; every file this tool makes for profiles and Pages is already 2.7:1.
• Uploading: we didn’t log in or upload a cover, so Facebook’s own crop step wasn’t tested.

What this tool doesn’t do

It doesn’t log in to Facebook or upload anything; you download the file and add it yourself. It makes still images (a GIF becomes its first frame), not cover videos. It isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by Meta. For a round profile picture use the profile picture resizer. Other headers: the X header resizer (1500×500), the LinkedIn banner resizer and the YouTube banner resizer.

Frequently asked questions