The Complete Guide to Twitter Image Sizes and Layouts: Boost Your Social Media Presence

Twitter is primarily about text and links. But in recent years they’ve also been adding more visual elements directly into the core Twitter service. So there are now several ways you can use photos and images directly in Twitter without resorting to third-party extensions, as you used to have to do.

There are several places where you can use images on Twitter, including the header photo (also known as the banner image), your profile picture, thumbnail previews for links, and sharing images directly in the feed.

Twitter’s current layout gives some different options for displaying images. I’m focusing here on display in web browsers. The Twitter mobile app is more of a controlled universe with less room to move in terms of image layout. But any of the size recommendations here hold true for the mobile app as well.

Twitter’s web interface is designed to be responsive, which means it fluidly adjusts for different displays, and it’s flexible enough to deal with desktops as well as mobiles. But while there are some specific guidelines in terms of dimensions to use, it’s also a bit trickier than it might seem at first.

So here are some recommendations for making the most of your Twitter header photo and profile picture. Starting with the header photo . . .

Twitter Profile Image Sizes

The profile picture is the smaller image at the bottom left. It’s usually a photo of the person or a logo. It’s now displayed as a circle with a white rim.

Your profile picture is the first thing people notice when visiting your Twitter profile. It should represent your brand or personal identity and be easily recognizable. The recommended size for a Twitter profile picture is 400×400 pixels, with a maximum file size of 2 MB. The image will be displayed as a circle, so ensure that the essential elements of your image are centered.

For displaying on a desktop browser, it uses what’s called intrinsic CSS sizing, which basically means that the image fits within a container. In this case, the container is 400 pixels by 400 pixels. It’s cropped to a circle automatically.

The recommended sizes to upload are:

Profile picture: 400px by 400px. It’s displayed as a round image with a thin white border. If you upload an image that’s not a perfect square, you’ll be given the option to reposition the image when you go to change it.

When the browser window resizes, the profile picture size stays constant.

Twitter Header Image Sizes

The header image, also known as the cover photo, spans the top of your Twitter profile. This image is an opportunity to showcase your brand, convey a message, or set the tone for your account. The recommended dimensions for a Twitter header image are 1500×500 pixels, with a maximum file size of 5 MB. Keep in mind that the header image may be cropped differently on various devices, so place crucial elements towards the center of the image.

I have a more detailed post on Twitter banner size, but here’s the quick version:

• The ideal dimensions are 1500 pixels wide by 500 pixels tall.
• File types you can use: JPG, PNG, GIF (non-animated), WebP
• Files should be under 5MB

That seems easy enough, right? Well, it is and it isn’t. Those 1500px by 500px images will generally work well, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to work perfectly in every case. That’s because of the way Twitter displays the header photo.

The overall dimensions work well, but the placement of elements within the frame can be a bit more complicated, because there are some extra considerations to factor in.

1. Avoid the profile picture. The profile picture is the circular image at the bottom left. It overlays the banner image and will obscure anything there.
2. The top section can be obscured on some mobile devices, so avoid putting any important text or visual information along a thin band along the top of the header image.
3. The display size is reduced, so avoid small text or fine detail that can get lost at smaller display sizes.

Retina and High-Density Displays

Twitter’s images don’t factor in retina or high-density displays on the desktop view. So uploading an image that’s twice the size doesn’t end up with a crisper result.

Image File Formats

You can upload JPG, PNG, GIF (non-animated), and WebP files. They’ll be compressed and converted to JPG automatically.

The file should be under 2MB in file size. 

Twitter Feed Images

There are a couple of different ways you can include images on your timeline.

Timeline Photos

If you manually add an image to a post, the image is displayed to fit within a square box that’s 506 pixels wide and 506 pixels high.

If you add an image that’s in horizontal orientation (ie. landscape orientation, or wider than it is tall), it will display the whole image and scale it down to 506 pixels wide. Here’s an illustration using a wide panorama:

If you add an image that’s vertical (ie. portrait orientation, or taller than it is wide), it will fill the width but crop equally from the top and bottom of the image to fill a square. Here’s an example using this image:

It displays on the Twitter timeline like this:

In both cases, all of the corners are rounded automatically with a border radius of 12px.

Twitter Card Images

Twitter cards allow you to attach rich media, such as photos, videos, and website previews, to your tweets.

For optimal image display, use dimensions of 1200×628 pixels with a 1.91:1 aspect ratio. The maximum file size for Twitter card images is 1 MB. These images will be cropped to fit within the card, so ensure that crucial elements are visible within the cropped area.

Twitter In-Stream Image Sizes

Twitter’s in-stream images are the visuals that appear in your tweets. These images can greatly enhance your content’s engagement and shareability. The recommended dimensions for in-stream images are 1024×512 pixels. However, Twitter will automatically resize and crop images to 506×253 pixels on desktop and 440×220 pixels on mobile. To avoid losing any essential elements in the cropping process, maintain a 2:1 aspect ratio for your images.

Twitter Image Quality Issues

When you upload, Twitter applies some very heavy JPG compression to your images. They do this to make the website as fast as possible for users and to conserve bandwidth.

The effects are particularly noticeable with the Profile Header image. The upshot is that the image that gets displayed might not look as good as the one you uploaded.

There are some things you can do to minimize the effect of that and reduce the chances of unsightly JPEG artifacts.

Firstly, upload an image with little or no compression. Every time you save a JPG image, you lose quality. That gets compounded the more times you do it.

If you’re saving an image from something like Photoshop or GIMP or any other imaging software, use the highest setting you can (e.g., a quality setting of 10 or 100%). Twitter is going to crunch whatever you send anyway. Starting with the highest quality version will help. You can even upload a PNG-24 if you want (although JPG is usually a better bet).

Secondly, because of the way JPG compression works, images with lots of different tones and smooth gradients are going to get hit especially hard. A rule of thumb is that images with fewer colors and fewer gradients suffer less from aggressive JPG compression.

Text, Logos & Watermarks on Twitter Profile Images

The heavy JPG compression applied to the images you upload does some pretty ugly things to text, logos, and watermarks. Here’s an example, a 100% crop from one image with a logo that I experimented with. You can see the very noticeable JPG compression artifacts surround the letters as well as some clear banding in the natural tonal gradient of the blue sky.

Again, to minimize the problem, aim for simple. Clean, high contrast lines and fonts are going to be less of a problem than subtle, complicated lines and fonts with things like partial transparency and drop shadows, etc. Sans-serif fonts will often work better than serif.

The old Facebook workaround of using a PNG-24 image doesn’t work on Twitter because Twitter converts everything to JPG.

And if you’re putting your logo or other text on the image, don’t put it at the very edges of the image where they’re likely to get cropped off in some browser displays. The safest zone of Twitter’s new profile header image is the center. The closer you can keep it to there, the less chance there is of it being cropped out with different web browser display sizes and aspect ratios.

There’s also a good reason not to include text or logos in the cover photo. The same cover photo is used for mobile apps like the official Twitter app. When it’s displayed in that, your Twitter profile picture and handle are automatically overlaid over the center of the cover photo, so it would obscure any logo that’s there. If you want to include a logo, putting it as the profile picture might give you better results across different displays.

Tips for Optimizing Twitter Images

• Use high-quality images: Clear and crisp images will create a better impression and increase the likelihood of engagement.
• Be consistent with your branding: Use colors, fonts, and visuals that align with your brand identity to create a cohesive online presence.
• Test on multiple devices: Ensure your images look good on desktop, mobile, and tablet devices, as your followers may view your profile from various platforms.
• Opt for accessibility: Include alternative text for images to make your content more accessible to users with visual impairments. I have a more detailed post on making your Twitter images more accessible here.

Other Twitter Image Sizes

There are, of course, other areas of Twitter where you can use images. Here are the dimensions of some of the core ones:

• Profile Picture: 400 x 400 pixels
• Website Card: 1200 x 628 pixels
• In-stream Photo: 440 x 220 pixels
• Twitter Ad: 1600 x 900 pixels
• Twitter Post: 1600 x 900 pixels
• Twitter Video: 1600 x 900 pixels
• Twitter Banner Size for Events: 1500 x 500 pixels

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