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Post at the right size.
The visual content you share to your X (formerly Twitter) profile plays a huge role in creating a positive impression of your brand in 2024.
Not only do strong visuals help your brand stand out from the crowd, they also convey important information in a visually appealing way that makes your brand more memorable.
When rendering content on different devices and platforms, how X/Twitter crops and resizes images and videos in tweets can significantly affect how your visual content appears in posts on the social media platform. Understanding X/Twitter’s best practices and recommendations helps your brand deliver a great user experience every time, resulting in higher engagement and more eyes on your content.
Developing a strong understanding of the best image and video sizes to use in your X/Twitter posts not only improves engagement with your content, it makes your life easier. This is because it opens up more opportunities to reuse and repurpose similarly sized content across multiple social media platforms, so you can free up hours in your work day.
This cheat sheet tells you everything you need to post images and videos to X/Twitter in 2024. From recommended image and picture sizes for posts, profile photos, cover photos and videos, optimal aspect ratio specifications, plus exclusive analysis and insights on the image and video sizes most commonly posted to X/Twitter in the real world by Sked users.
You might be surprised to find why they don’t (always) match the official recommendations.
Best X/Twitter image sizes for 2024
Sizing is likely not the first thing that comes to mind when you’re uploading an image to X/Twitter.. When you’re focused on creating value-packed content, content specs like size and file types can fall to the wayside.
But, the truth is, as a marketer, details make a significant difference. Not optimizing social media image sizes could mean your message getting lost due to unfortunate cropping. A few simple tweaks to your images can prevent this from happening and create a much better viewing experience.
To simplify things, we’ve listed all the recommended X/Twitter image specs for various types of images on the platform.
X / Twitter post images: 1600 x 900 pixels (recommended) - (1080 x 1080px & 1080 x 1350px)
Using in-feed images (or images that appear within a post) can be an effective way to increase engagement and get more eyes on your content. Images should be high-quality, visually appealing, and relevant to your message for optimal reach.
It's important to keep in mind that larger images will be automatically resized to fit within these parameters, so it's best to upload images that are at least these sizes to ensure they are clear and easily viewable.
Use the recommended image size to make sure that the in-feed preview doesn’t leave out the best parts of your picture.
X/Twitter’s recommended image sizing for your in-feed image is:
- Image dimensions Landscape: 1600 by 900 pixels (recommended) / 1024 by 512 pixels (minimum) .
- Image dimensions Square: 1080 by 1080 pixels
- Image dimensions Portrait: 1080 x 1350 pixels
- Aspect ratio: Use 2:1 or 1:1 on desktop and 2:1, 3:4, 5:4 or 16:9 on mobile
- Maximum image size: 5 MB
Note: In May 2021, X/Twitter rolled out an update to show full images on timelines, including those sized as square (1:1 aspect ratio or 1080 x 1080 pixels) and vertical (4:5 ratio or 1080 x 1350 px) images.
We wanted to see if users in the real world were using X/Twitter’s official image size recommendations so we looked at the data. We crunched the numbers on over 100,000 images posted to X/Twitter by Sked Social users and found a clear preference for these two new image sizes (1080 x 1080 px & 1080 x 1350 px), accounting for nearly 40% of all images posted to X/Twitter and significantly above the next most popular size (revealed in our 2023 X/Twitter image size analysis below).
X/Twitter profile photos: 400 x 400 pixels (recommended)
Your X/Twitter profile image or avatar may be a tiny thumbnail, but it’s one of your most important images. After all, this is the image that tells the X/Twitter users who you are—as a person or a brand.
Getting the size right is important because your X/Twitter profile picture—whether it’s a photo of you or your logo—needs to be clear, even on a mobile device. Especially if you have a company page or business page, a low quality profile picture can reflect poorly on your brand.
X/Twitter’s recommended image sizing for your profile photo is:
- Dimension: 400 by 400 pixels
- Aspect ratio: 1:1
- Maximum image size: 2 MB
X/Twitter header/banner images: 1500 x 1500 pixels (recommended)
X/Twitter header images - also called cover images or header photos - are a powerful part of your company page’s branding. Treat your header as free advertising space for promoting yourself and your brand. The cover photo size is much bigger than the profile photo size, so don’t be afraid to use that extra room for creativity.
As you create your header image, remember that your profile picture will encroach into your X/Twitter banner slightly, so make sure to keep any text away from the lower left-hand side of your design. This way, it won’t be obscured by your profile picture.
X/Twitter’s recommended image sizing for your cover photo is:
- Dimension: 1500 by 500 pixels
- Aspect ratio: 3:1
- Maximum image size: 5 MB
- Keep in mind that the way header images display changes depending on the monitor and browser being used.
X/Twitter Cards: 4096 x 4096 pixels (recommended)
Whenever you post a link, X/Twitter crawls that website and pulls a relevant image from the site that’s displayed in the newsfeed. When people click on this image, they’re taken straight to the website. However, this only works if you’ve added X/Twitter Cards on your website. If not, your post will appear the old school way as text and a link.
Note that the X/Twitter card image size has to be correct for the image to display properly.
X/Twitter’s recommended image sizing for your X/Twitter cards is:
- Dimension: minimum size of 144 x 144 (or 300 x 157 pixels for a large card image) 4096 x 4096 pixels (maximum file size)
- Aspect ratio: 2:1
- Maximum image size: 5 MB
X/Twitter Ads
Images are an essential part of X/Twitter Advertising. The recommended dimensions for visual content used on X/Twitter ads vary depending on the type of ad, such as standalone image ads, video ads, carousel ads, etc.X/Twitter’s recommended image sizing for your X/Twitter ads:
- Single and multi-image tweets: Minimum 600 x 335 pixels, but larger images will look better to users.
- Website card image: 800 x 418 pixels for 1.91:1 aspect ratio. 800 x 800 for 1:1 aspect ratio. Max file size of 20MB.
- App card image: 800 x 800 pixels for 1:1 aspect ratio. 800 x 418 pixels for 1.91:1 aspect ratio. Max file size of 3MB.
- Carousels: 800 x 800 pixels for 1:1 aspect ratio. 800 x 418 pixels for 1.91:1 aspect ratio. Max file size of 20MB for 2-6 image cards.
- Direct Message card: 800 x 418 pixels for 1.91:1 aspect ratio. Max file size of 3MB.
- Conversation card: 800 x 418 pixels for 1.91:1 aspect ratio. Max file size of 3MB.
You can find the complete X/X/Twitter image size guide for each ad type here.
Now that you’ve got this handy X/Twitter image cheat sheet, why not double check that your other social media platforms are up to par? Check out our full guide on social image sizing here.
Best X/Twitter video sizing in 2024
There’s no denying it - video content is dominating social media marketing in 2024 - and that includes X/Twitter.
According to studies, posts that contain video generate 1200% more shares than text and image content combined. And viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.That means the time for ignoring video in your strategy has long passed.
Video content plays a significant role on X/Twitter as it allows users to engage with their audience in a more dynamic way. X/Twitter videos can be used to promote products, services, or events, to share behind-the-scenes footage, or to create educational content.
When it comes to sizing video content on X/Twitter, here are a few best practices to keep in mind:
X/Twitter video aspect ratios: 16:9 (recommended)
For starters, it’s important to consider the aspect ratio of your X/Twitter videos.
The aspect ratio refers to the relationship of the width of a video compared to its height. The aspect ratio determines how a video is formatted and how it will fit on your viewing screen.
X/Twitter supports a variety of video aspect ratios, including:
- 16:9
- 4:3
- 1:1
Despite supporting multiple aspect ratios, the most common and recommended aspect ratio for X/Twitter video content is 16:9. This aspect ratio allows for a wide and clear display of your video on both desktop and mobile devices.
Additionally, Twitter allows video up to 512MB in size, which is sufficient for most videos.
Twitter video resolution: 1280x 720 pixels (recommended)
Equally (or arguably even more) important than the aspect ratio of your video is the video resolution.
A high resolution video is optimal for a clear, professional quality video, while a low resolution can damage your brand’s reputation by coming off as blurry and unprofessional.
X/Twitter recommends uploading videos in 1280p or 720p resolution for an optimal viewing experience.
Despite these recommendations from X/Twitter, the evolving nature of social media video means social media managers may opt for convenience over best practice.
A quick look at our real world data on video sizing reveals that the most popular video resolution was 1080 x 1080, which closely mirrors video sizing practices for Instagram feed posts. Similarly, the most common video aspect ratio was 1:1 (square), compared to the 16:9 ratio that Twitter recommends.
X/Twitter video length
X/Twitter allows users to upload videos up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds in length, and also supports live streaming.
When it comes to video length, it’s best to keep your videos shorter, or between 15 and 30 seconds, to ensure that the audience watches the whole thing. Bumping up those video completion rates will help your content’s performance overall and help get your business in front of new audiences faster.
Selecting the right file types and sizes for X/Twitter
Using the appropriate file type is your best chance of guaranteeing that your images will look clear and professional.
According to X/Twitter’s Developer Platform, these are the media best practices for the platform:
Images:
- When choosing the appropriate file type for your image: JPEG (or JPGs) tends to be best for photos, while PNG is preferred for infographics and illustrations.
- Opt for PNG files if you want to keep the background transparent.
- Avoid BMP or TIFF file formats for images.
GIFs:
- Resolution should be 1280x1080.
- Number of frames be 350 or less.
- File size should be 15MB or less.
Video:
- Supported formats for video are MP4 and MOV on the X/Twitter mobile app, and MP4 with H264 format with AAC LC audio on the web.
- The maximum file size for videos is 512MB.
- Frame rates should be 60 FPS or less.
Most common image and video sizes used by real X/Twitter users
To create a clearer picture of the image and video sizes used in the real world by social media managers when they post on X/Twitter, we decided to go straight to the source - the users themselves.
We pulled a comprehensive selection of data from our all-in-one social media tool to uncover the most common image sizes and aspect ratios used by Sked Social users. Then, we compared how they stacked up to X/Twitter’s best practices. The sample size looked at over 100,000 posts that included images in the posts (and over 5,000 posts with videos).
Most common X/Twitter image aspect ratios
In our data we found that almost half of all shared images on X/Twitter were square, or a 1:1 aspect ratio. The following table ranks the most common aspect ratios used:
- 1:1 46.4%
- 4:5 14.64%
- 4:3 5.07%
- 3:2 2.33%
- 16:9 2.24%
- 3:4 1.44%
- 5:4 0.90%
- 2:30.86%
Note: This totals 73.90% of the data examined - the remainder is made up from aspect ratios that are all total less than 0.7% individually.
As mentioned above, X/Twitter made changes back in 2021 that did away with cropping of images in feeds on mobile devices. That may have led users to take advantage of this increased image real estate by including more 1:1 and 4:5 sized images on their feeds.
And while these findings don’t quite match up with what we know to be X/Twitter’s image best practices, it could be a result of social media managers and marketers opting to repurpose content across multiple platforms. After all, it’s no coincidence that the most popular image ratios for Instagram are 1:1 (for square images) and 4:5 (for vertical images).
Bonus: These image sizes also work great for Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn images!
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Most common X/Twitter image sizes
Overwhelmingly, Sked users tended to post images that were either 1080 x 1080 pixels or 1080 x 1350 pixels.
- 1080 x 1080 26.57%
- 1080 x 1350 10.78%
- 800 x 800 1.58%
- 2150 x 2150 1.45%
- 1200 x 1200 1.29%
- 2048 x 2048 1.28%
- 1080 x 810 1.23%
- 4032 x 3024 1.08%
- 1600 x 900 1.07%
- 4500 x 4500 1.07%
Note: All other image sizes individually represent < 1% of the total.
These results mirror much of what we saw in the aspect ratios data above. The data also provides further support for our theory that these new image sizes are due to social media managers creating a single piece of visual content optimized for Instagram and using it across multiple social networks .
Most common X/Twitter video sizes
Along with examining image sizing among Sked users, we also wanted to better understand what sizes of video our users preferred when it came to their X/Twitter posts. We pulled a total sample size just shy of 5,000 videos.
Here are our findings:
Almost 90% of X/Twitter videos were one of the following aspect ratios:
- 1:1 (square) - 42.59%
- 9:16 (portrait) - 21.38%
- 16:9 (landscape) - 17.35%
X/Twitter video sizes closely mirrored video sizes on Instagram.
- 1080 x 1080 37.23%
- 1080 x 608 12.03%
- 1080 x 1920 10.77%
- 720 x 1280 6.90%
- 1080 x 1350 6.61%
- 1920 x 1080 3.37%
- 576 x 1024 3.25%
- 720 x 720 1.59%
With the rise of short-form video giant TikTok, other social media platforms have also pivoted heavily to video. This shift has become even more pronounced with the popularity of Instagram’s Reels feature. Now it seems those video sizes are carrying over to X/Twitter as well.
The top X/Twitter video sizes among Sked users being 1080 x 1080 (the standard video size for Instagram), 1080 x 608 (minimum size for Instagram) and 1080 x 1920 (maximum size for Instagram) seems to confirm what marketers have suspected all along: several social networks, including X/Twitter, Instagram, and even YouTube videos are slowly transitioning to a standard video format in an attempt to capture market share from TikTok.
Manage your visual content across all your social accounts with Sked Social
Now that you’ve got a solid grasp of aspect ratios and pixels for your X/Twitter posts, let’s talk about how to easily repurpose your images and videos across multiple platforms.
As highlighted above, the content sizing that X/Twitter accepts today can be used across multiple platforms, including Instagram.
Sked’s Image Library can help you curate the perfectly sized posts for X/Twitter and schedule all your social media content posts in advance. Our image cropping and editing tools allow you to resize and crop your images directly within our Planner, so you can be sure you’re achieving your best look on each platform.
By spending less time and energy fussing over image and video sizes, you’ll free up time to spend crafting content that resonates with your audience.