Instagram story size

Every Instagram story size, in pixels

A story is the only image on Instagram that gets the entire screen, and the entire screen is also where the app draws its own controls, so the frame and the usable part of the frame are two different measurements.

• Story frame: 1080x1920px, a ratio of 9:16. The whole screen, and what a story is stored and played at.
• Safe area for text and stickers: 1080x1420px, a ratio of 1:1.31. The band through the middle that no interface element covers on any phone.
• Feed photo reshared to a story: 1080x1350px, a ratio of 4:5. A portrait post placed on a background rather than stretched to fill the screen.
• The top of the frame carries your profile row and the progress bars and the bottom carries the reply box, which is why the safe band is a good deal shorter than the frame itself.
• Stories are compressed harder than feed posts. Flat backgrounds and large type hold up, while gradients band and fine detail smears.
• A link sticker, a poll or a question box lands inside the safe band too, so leave room for it rather than filling the space it will want.
• A story lasts a day unless it goes to a highlight, where the cover is cropped to a circle out of the middle of the frame.

Check a file you already have against the Instagram story size

Most stories are made somewhere else and uploaded afterwards, which is exactly where the shape goes wrong: a design tool opens on a square or a four by five canvas and the export gets stretched or padded on the way in.

1. 1Pick the target first. This page carries 3 Instagram story sizes, and a verdict only means something against one of them.
2. 2Choose your image. It is opened by this browser tab and measured on a canvas, so the file never leaves the machine you are sitting at and there is no queue or upload to wait for.
3. 3Read the result: an exact match at 1080x1920, the same 9:16 shape at a different scale, or a crop with the axis that loses pixels named.
4. 4If it is wrong, open the Instagram resizer linked underneath. It exports to these exact numbers instead of leaving the decision to the platform.
5. 5Then check the same file against the safe band. A story that passes the frame and fails the band is one with its headline tucked under the progress bars.

What Instagram does when the shape is wrong

Instagram fills the screen with whatever it is handed. A file that is not the full-screen shape is enlarged until it covers, and the overflow is cut, so a square arrives with its left and right edges missing.

• A square photo posted to a story is enlarged until it fills the height, which takes roughly a fifth off each side.
• A file narrower than the screen is upscaled, and on a phone held close to the face that softness is obvious in a way it never is in a feed.
• Text placed at the very top or the very bottom sits under the progress bars or behind the reply box, where it is both unreadable and untappable.

Design for the band, not for the frame

The single change that improves most stories is not a size at all. It is moving everything that matters into the middle of the screen and accepting that the top and the bottom belong to the app.

• Put the headline in the upper middle and the ask just above the reply box, with the sticker between them.
• A story is watched with a thumb hovering over the next tap, so one idea per frame beats a paragraph nobody pauses for.
• If the story is a screenshot of something wide, place it on a plain background at its own size instead of filling the frame with it.