YouTube aspect ratio calculator

Every aspect ratio YouTube uses

YouTube is the most single-minded platform in this family: one shape carries the player, the thumbnail and the banner, and one separate shape carries Shorts.

• Standard video and thumbnail, 16:9. The player is built around this shape, so anything else is fitted into it rather than shown instead of it. In our image resizer: Video thumbnail at 1280x720px, Channel banner at 2560x1440px.
• Shorts, 9:16. A separate vertical surface with its own player, not a crop of a widescreen upload. In our image resizer: Shorts cover at 1080x1920px.
• Channel photo, 1:1. Stored square and drawn as a circle, so anything in the corners of your upload is never seen. In our image resizer: Channel photo at 800x800px.

Why 16:9 is the shape the player is built around

The player frame is fixed and your video is fitted into it. Upload something that is not 16:9 and you have not changed the frame, you have only decided where the grey bands go.

• A 4:3 upload is pillarboxed, with bands down the left and the right. A 9:16 upload in the main player is boxed on both sides far harder.
• Those bands are encoded into what viewers see rather than added by the player, so no setting on their end removes them.
• The thumbnail is the same shape as the player for a reason: it is shown in the slot the video will fill, and a mismatched thumbnail is letterboxed in the grid.
• The banner is uploaded at 16:9 but only the strip across its middle is shown on every device, so the shape you upload is not the shape most people see.
• Anything not made for 16:9 is better re-framed at the edit stage. A crop applied after export throws away resolution you paid for in the shoot.

Shorts are a separate upload, not a crop

A Short has its own vertical player and its own surface in the app, so it is a different file rather than a different view of the same one. Treating it as a crop is the usual reason a channel posts a Short with the subject half out of frame.

• Cropping 16:9 footage to 9:16 keeps roughly a third of the width, and the centre third is rarely where a presenter was standing.
• A Shorts cover is vertical, so the thumbnail you designed for the widescreen version cannot be reused without bands or a crop.
• Vertical uploads under a minute are treated as Shorts, which means the shape you choose changes which surface the video lands on.
• If both versions matter, frame the original shoot so the vertical crop still works. That is a camera decision and no calculator recovers it later.
• Solve the vertical pair first and edit to it. Re-framing from a finished widescreen export is always the more expensive route.

Solving a YouTube size from the shape

Most YouTube questions are really one question with the numbers changed: what is the other side at this shape. Here is the order that answers it without guessing.

1. 1Enter the width you have available, whether that is a camera export, a screen recording or a canvas in a design tool.
2. 2Lock the shape for the surface you are filling, widescreen for the player and the thumbnail, vertical for a Short.
3. 3Check the solved height against your source. A shortfall means an upscale, and an upscale is visible on a screen this large.
4. 4For a thumbnail, remember that the file size ceiling is 2 MB in the mobile app and 50 MB in a desktop browser. Shape and file size are separate constraints and both are enforced.
5. 5Hand the finished pair to the image resizer to export, so the numbers on the page and the numbers in the file are the same numbers.