YouTube Banner Resizer
One file, four crops. This shows you the 1546×423 that every device actually displays.
Fills the space around a contained image.
Dims everything outside the region visible on every device. Never included in the download.
How much of the file each device shows
| Device | Crop | Share |
|---|---|---|
| TV | 2560×1440 | 100% |
| Desktop | 2560×423 | 29% |
| Tablet | 1855×423 | 21% |
| Mobile | 1546×423 | 18% |
Drop an image here
or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V. Nothing is uploaded.
Everything here runs on your device. Nothing you enter is uploaded or stored.
A YouTube banner is the clearest example of a problem no size chart solves: you upload one image and the platform shows four different rectangles cut out of it.
How to use it
Drop in your artwork. Keep the Channel banner preset — 2560×1440 is the only size to upload. The preview dims everything outside the region visible on every device, leaving a bright strip in the middle. Move your content into that strip, then download.
Four crops, one file
| Device | Crop | Share of the file |
|---|---|---|
| TV | 2560×1440 | 100% |
| Desktop | 2560×423 | 17% |
| Tablet | 1855×423 | 12% |
| Mobile | 1546×423 | 10% |
The safe area is the overlap of all four, which is the mobile crop: 1546×423. Because the strip is centred in a frame more than three times its height, it begins 509 pixels down and 507 pixels in from each side. Those two numbers are the ones worth remembering, and they are why corner logos fail.
Design the middle first
The most reliable way to make a banner work is to build the 1546×423 centre as its own composition — name, tagline, whatever matters — and then place it in the middle of a 2560×1440 canvas with a background that extends outward. Televisions get a full-bleed image, phones get the part that carries the message, and nothing important is ever cropped.
The Safe area preset gives you that 1546×423 canvas directly. It is a design aid, not an upload: uploading it would leave YouTube to enlarge it to 2560 wide, which looks soft.
The 6 MB limit
Banners accept JPEG and PNG up to 6 MB. A 2560×1440 PNG of a photograph is around 7 MB and gets refused; the same frame as a quality-90 JPEG is closer to 700 KB and indistinguishable at display size. The tool flags the combination before you find out from an error message. PNG remains the right choice for flat-colour designs and anything with hard-edged text.
Channel picture and watermark
Both are included because they are part of the same job. The channel picture is 800×800, uploaded square and always displayed as a circle — the preview draws the circle so you can see which corners are discarded. The video watermark is 150×150 and renders at roughly 40 pixels on a phone, which makes it a single mark on transparency, never a logo containing words.
What it does not do
It does not upload, so it cannot set your banner. It does not compose text or graphics — bring finished artwork. And it will not quietly enlarge a small source: if your image is under 2560 wide, the warning says so and by how much.
Which tool for which job
| You want to | Use |
|---|---|
| A channel banner with all four crops | This tool |
| A thumbnail that reads at 168 pixels | YouTube Thumbnail Resizer |
| A LinkedIn banner with the avatar overlap | LinkedIn Banner Resizer |
| An X header, 1500×500 | X Header Resizer |
| Any custom pixel size | Image Resizer |
The image is decoded, drawn and encoded on your device with the browser’s own File and Canvas APIs. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored.
Questions
What size is a YouTube banner?
2560×1440, and that is the only size worth uploading. But the size is not the problem — YouTube shows that one file at four different crops depending on the device, and only the central 1546×423 appears on all of them. That works out to about 18 percent of the pixels you uploaded. A logo in a corner of a 2560×1440 banner is invisible to everyone not watching on a television.
What is the YouTube banner safe area?
1546×423, centred. It is the intersection of the four crops YouTube uses — 2560×1440 on TV, 2560×423 on desktop, 1855×423 on tablet and 1546×423 on mobile. This tool computes that intersection from the crop list rather than hardcoding a number, and draws all four so you can see which surface loses what. The strip starts 509 pixels down from the top and 507 pixels in from each side — a long way from where most people instinctively place things.
Why does my banner look fine on desktop and wrong on my phone?
Desktop shows a 2560-wide strip and mobile shows 1546 of it, so anything in the outer 507 pixels on either side simply is not there on a phone. Channel names that run edge to edge, social icons in the corners and taglines that fill the width are the usual casualties. Design the middle first — the Safe area preset here gives you a 1546×423 canvas for exactly that, which you then centre in the full file.
What are the file limits?
6 MB maximum, and JPEG or PNG. A 2560×1440 PNG of a photograph is very likely to exceed it because PNG is lossless and photographs have no flat regions to compress; the same image as a quality-90 JPEG lands well under. The tool warns you when the format and size combination is likely to be refused. Keep PNG only if you genuinely need a flat-colour design to stay crisp.
Can I upload just the 1546×423 safe area?
You can, but do not. YouTube will scale it up to fill the 2560-wide desktop strip, which makes it soft, and the TV view will be a stretched mess. The safe-area preset in this tool is for designing the middle of your banner, not for uploading. Compose your final file at 2560×1440 with the important content centred.
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