X (Twitter) Photo Resizer

X (Twitter) image sizes for 2026

As of August 2026, these are the numbers that matter, checked against the X Help Center and X Ads specs. Profile photo: 400×400 pixels, maximum 2MB, in JPEG, PNG or GIF. Header: 1500×500 pixels, a 3:1 ratio. Post photos: up to 5MB each, up to four per post. Animated GIFs get more room (5MB on mobile and 15MB on web), but a GIF must travel alone; X will not combine one with other images in the same post.

For in-feed post images, 1600×900 or 1200×675 both give you a sharp 16:9 landscape. Square posts work at 1080×1080, and 1080×1350 covers the 4:5 vertical that takes up the most timeline height without risking a crop. Link previews using the large summary card render at 1200×628 (1.91:1), with the same 5MB ceiling as regular photos.

Running ads changes the menu slightly: image ads accept PNG or JPEG up to 5MB, carousel ads take 2–6 slides at 800×418 (1.91:1) or 800×800 (1:1), and every slide in a carousel must share one ratio. GIFs placed in ads render as static frames, so there is no point paying the file-size cost.

Two formats never work anywhere on X: BMP and TIFF are explicitly rejected at upload. And photos do not count toward the 280-character limit, so a four-image post costs you no text.

The 1500×500 header, and the safe zone that actually matters

Most size guides stop at “1500×500” and tell you to leave some empty space. The real constraint has numbers: X’s own help pages warn that 60 pixels on the top and 60 pixels on the bottom of the header can be cropped away, depending on the viewer’s monitor and browser. That leaves a center band of roughly 1500×380 where text and faces are reliably safe.

The second hazard is the profile photo, which overlaps the lower-left corner of the header on every profile view. Logos, names or dates placed there disappear behind the avatar. Keep critical content centered vertically and clear of the lower-left, and the header survives every layout X renders.

On file size, sources disagree. X only documents a 2MB cap for profile photos and says nothing official about headers, while third-party guides quote anywhere from 2MB to 5MB. Keeping headers under 2MB is the safe play: it clears every claimed limit and gives X’s compressor less reason to degrade the image.

Why X makes your images blurry, and how to stop it

The blur is not your export settings failing; it is X re-processing your file. The Help Center states it plainly: “your photo will be automatically scaled for display.” Every upload gets recompressed, and the further your image is from the target dimensions, the more aggressive that rescale is. An image that looks perfect in the upload preview can still lose quality the moment you press save, because the preview shows your file and the timeline shows X’s recompressed copy.

The fix is to give the compressor nothing to do. Export at exactly the dimensions of the slot (1500×500 for a header, 400×400 for a profile photo, 1600×900 for a landscape post) rather than uploading a 4K file and letting X shrink it. Never upscale a small image to hit a recommended size; you are enlarging noise that compression then smears.

Format choice matters too. PNG holds up better for text, line art, screenshots and flat-color graphics, where JPEG artifacts show first. JPEG is the right call for photographs, where its compression is least visible. Either way, stay comfortably under the 5MB photo cap and export in sRGB, since wide-gamut color profiles can shift or dull after X’s processing.

How X crops photos in the timeline

A single photo currently displays uncropped in the timeline anywhere from 2:1 landscape through 3:4 portrait. Inside that range, what you upload is what people see; outside it, X crops to fit. 16:9 and 1:1 have been safe through every layout change, so they are the ratios to default to. 3:4 displays in full as of mid-2026, but preview before posting: X has reversed itself on portrait display before.

That reversal is why older advice conflicts. In 2021 X switched to showing single images full-frame in the timeline, then later walked part of it back, and users have complained ever since about having to open pictures to see the whole thing. Any guide written between those changes is describing a timeline that no longer exists.

Multi-image posts follow different rules that almost no size guide covers. Two images are each cropped to 7:8, side by side, which is why the first image of a pair “crops weirdly” and the second loses its edges. Four images render as a 2×2 grid of thumbnails. If a post depends on every pixel being visible, one image in a safe ratio beats four.

One last habit worth building: add alt text to every image before posting. It makes the post usable for screen-reader users and gives X actual text to index for a photo it otherwise cannot read.