What Facebook's help page says now
Facebook's help page for Page cover photos (Facebook Help, checked 24 October 2026) gives these rules:
| Rule | Value |
|---|---|
| Minimum size | 400 × 150 pixels |
| Loads fastest as | sRGB JPG, 851 × 315 pixels, under 100 KB |
| On a computer | Left-aligned, full bleed, 16:9 aspect ratio (added to the help page between 24 September and 24 October 2026) |
| On a phone | Left-aligned, full bleed, 2.4:1 aspect ratio |
| Profile picture | Overlaps the cover by about 40 pixels on mobile |
The 16:9 for computers is new and sits oddly next to the 851 × 315 recommendation, which is much wider than 16:9. We have not yet seen how Facebook crops a wide cover on a computer under the new rule. If it really shows the cover at 16:9 from the left, a cover 312 pixels high keeps only about the left 555 of its 820 pixels, less than on a phone, and the right end of the shaded area would be cut. Until we can confirm it, keep faces and text in the left half of the shaded area.
The page no longer lists the 820 × 312 desktop display size or a centred 640-pixel mobile crop, which most size guides — including an earlier version of this one — still quote. This tool exports 820 × 312: above the minimum, almost the same shape as the recommended 851 × 315, and small enough to stay near the 100 KB that Facebook says loads fastest.
The shaded safe zone in the preview
On a phone the cover is shown at 2.4:1 and aligned to the left, so at 312 pixels high the visible part is about the left 749 pixels of an 820-pixel cover; the right edge is what gets cut. The shaded area in the preview marks the central 640 pixels, which sits inside that visible part and away from both edges, so anything you place inside it survives on a computer and on a phone. Keep faces and text out of the bottom-left corner as well, where the profile picture overlaps the cover on mobile.
Why crop around a focal point
820x312 is a wide, short strip — roughly 2.6:1 — and very few source photos start out that shape. A straight centred crop only works if the subject already sits in the middle of the original image; anything positioned to one side gets cut away once the photo is cropped down to a banner this shallow. Dragging the focal point onto whatever has to stay visible — a face, a product, the readable part of a background — builds the crop around that point instead, and keeps it inside the mobile safe zone if you check the overlay while positioning it.
Does the profile picture cover part of it too?
On some layouts the profile picture sits slightly over the bottom-left of the cover photo, similar to how header images work on other platforms, but it's a minor overlap compared to the desktop/mobile size difference above, which is the change that actually affects what most visitors see. The safe-zone overlay here is built around that bigger, more consistent difference.
Upload larger than 820×312 if you have it
Facebook re-compresses cover photos regardless of the source resolution, so a higher-resolution original doesn't make the final cover objectively sharper once it's live — but it does give the crop more detail to work with before quality starts to soften, particularly if the focal point ends up cropping in tightly. This tool downscales from whatever you provide down to 820x312; it's upscaling a source that's already too small that causes visible softness, not starting large.
Output is JPEG at high quality. Everything runs in your browser using the canvas API — the photo is never uploaded to a server, there's no account or sign-up, and no file size limit beyond what your own device can handle.