Simple Guide to Facebook Cover Photo Size: Pages, Profiles & Groups

Despite the fact the Facebook's instructions about the dimensions of cover photos are quite clear, there is still much confusion surrounding this topic. A cover photo is the first thing your friends, followers or business associates see when they check out your Facebook profile, which makes the selection of a perfect cover photo even more important.

A cover photo is a perfect weapon to convey messages you find important, but if a photo you use is severely cropped by the social network's algorithm the visitors of your group, page or a profile will have a difficult time seeing these messages. Let's try to shed some light on this somewhat confusing subject. 

Perfect Sizes for Facebook Cover Photo on Profiles, Pages, and Groups

In addition to horizontally oriented almost panoramic photos, a video can also be used as a Facebook cover. However, the sizes of cover photos and videos vary, which is why it is important to use video and photo files that meet Facebook's demands.

Computers, Smartphones, and tablets all display different cover photo sizes, so you need to make sure you place the information essential to you in the area of the photo that won't be automatically cropped even if the image's size is slightly altered when viewed on different devices. This means that important information like email addresses or phone numbers shouldn't be placed near the edges of the cover photo.

Furthermore, cover photos for Facebook profiles, groups and pages all have slightly different dimensions, thus our recommendation is to use an image that has 1920x1080 pixels because the image of this size is large enough to behave well regardless of the purpose for which you use it.

Cover video

The new cover video option enables online marketers to share more information about their businesses and products. The length of the video must be between 20 and 90 seconds while its size should be 820x312 pixels. This duration of a video is more than enough to tell captivating stories that create better user engagement.

Using a video which has dimensions that are slightly off is possible, but you'll have to reposition it, which basically means that you'll be able to crop your video and select the areas that will be removed by Facebook's algorithm.

Cover Photo

The size of a cover photo for desktop computers, Smartphones, and tables differs in width and height, and for that reason, it is important to keep this fact in mind when designing cover photos. The smallest cover photo size on a computer is 399x150 pixels, but the recommended size is 820x312 pixels.

Regardless of the device on which a profile, a group or a page is displayed, if you use a picture that has 1920x1080 pixels you'll never have to worry about how your cover photo will look like.

Profile Cover Photo

The space for a cover photo spans over the entire width of a Facebook profile, thus its longer side shouldn't have less than 720 pixels. The dimensions for a profile cover photo displayed on a desktop are 851x315 pixels, while tablets have 851x460 pixels and mobile devices display profile cover photos that have 640x360 pixels.

This information shows that the desktop will reduce the height of your profile cover photo and certain areas of a profile cover photo will not be displayed on a desktop computer but they will be visible on a tablet.

Page’s Cover Photo

A page on a Facebook can be used to promote all sorts of organizations and services, but a page must be carefully designed and managed in order to attract as many likes as it possibly can. A cover photo is one of the most important visual elements on any Facebook page, which is the reason its design requires a special attention.

The height of the cover photo displayed on a desktop is similar to the profile photo since it only has 312 pixels while its width is 820 pixels. A tablet will display a Page cover photo that has 820x391 pixels, while a Smartphone shows 640x360 pixels. The photo you upload as your cover photo should therefore be at least 400 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall, although a much larger image file size would be a better choice if you want to impress the visitors of your Facebook page.

Group Cover Photo

The dimensions of the group cover photo are identical to the dimensions of the page's cover photo on a Smartphone, while the desktop version of a group cover photo is slightly taller than the cover photo on a Facebook page.

Groups usually unite Facebook users over the topics they have an interest in, so selecting the picture that perfectly reflects the subject a group explores will increase the number of members it has.

The differences between the sizes of cover photos are relatively small, but still significant enough to be worthy of your attention, because a poorly designed cover photo won't impress anyone. Centrally composed and horizontally oriented photos work best as cover photos because even if they are cropped by Facebook's algorithm you won't lose important information since these images don't have any visual elements near the edges.