Facebook cover photo size, and the part of it nobody sees
851 x 315 is the number everyone quotes and it is not the number that matters. Desktop and mobile crop the same upload differently, and only the overlap between them is always visible. Here is that area, drawn out, with the arithmetic behind it.
Upload your Facebook cover photo at 851 x 315 pixels. Then keep every word and your logo inside a centred box of roughly 640 x 312, because that is the only part of it that is visible on both a laptop and a phone. The first number is the one every guide gives you. The second is the one that decides whether your cover reads or gets cut in half.
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The number you upload, and the number that matters
A Facebook cover is one file shown in two shapes. On a laptop it is displayed wide and short, about 820 by 312. On a phone the frame is narrower and proportionally taller, about 640 by 360, so Facebook scales your image up and cuts the sides off to fill it.
That is the whole problem in one sentence: the phone does not show you the sides, and most people design on a laptop. A cover with the business name ranged left and the opening hours ranged right looks balanced while you are making it and loses both ends to more than half the people who see it.
| What | Size | Why it is that number |
|---|---|---|
| Upload | 851 x 315 | Facebook's own stated recommendation for fastest loading |
| Desktop shows | about 820 x 312 | Slightly narrower than the upload |
| Mobile shows | about 640 x 360 | Narrower still, and proportionally taller |
| Always visible | about 640 x 312, centred | The overlap of the two. This is the safe area |
| Format | JPG under 100KB | PNG for flat colour or crisp type, at a larger file size |
The corner your profile picture eats
Your profile picture sits over the cover, and on a Page it lands towards the bottom left. On a phone it moves and can end up more centred. There is no single set of coordinates worth memorising here, because Facebook has moved this element more than once and will again.
The rule that survives the moving is simple: treat the bottom left of the cover as decoration, never as content. Background, texture, a continuation of a photograph, all fine. A word, a logo or a face, not fine.
What to actually put on it
Most business covers are a logo on a colour, which is a waste of the largest piece of visual space Facebook gives you. The logo is already on the page, twice, in the profile picture and in the name. The cover is the only place you can answer the question a stranger actually has, which is what you do and whether you are open.
- A photograph of the actual place or work. The single most useful thing a local business can put here, and the one it is least likely to use.
- One line that says what you do, in the words a customer would use. Not a slogan.
- Something time-bound, if you will maintain it. New season, new menu, now taking bookings. Only if you will change it, because a cover advertising last Christmas is worse than a plain one.
- Nothing that needs to be clicked or copied. A cover is a flat image. Phone numbers and addresses belong in the Page fields where they are tappable and where Facebook can use them.
Common things that go wrong
| What happens | Why | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Text cut off on phones | Mobile crops roughly 22% of the width | Move it inside the centred 640 |
| Cover looks blurry | Uploaded smaller than 851 wide, so it is upscaled | Export at 851 x 315 or a clean multiple |
| Colours look duller than the file | Uploaded in a wide colour space | Export sRGB |
| Logo hidden behind the profile picture | Bottom left is overlapped | Keep that corner decorative |
| Slow or heavily compressed | File much larger than needed | JPG, under 100KB where you can |
If you are setting up a Page from scratch, the cover is the smallest of the decisions. Once posts are going up, the next thing people ask is why nobody can share them. What goes in the feed is the one that takes the time, and what a small business should post about is a better use of an afternoon than this page. For the sizes of everything else, the full size guide collapses most of them into two files, and Instagram's feed has its own page because its grid changed. One warning if you are doing LinkedIn in the same session: the centred safe area on this page is a Facebook fact, not a general one, and copying it to a LinkedIn banner puts your logo behind your own profile photo.
Frequently asked questions
What is the correct Facebook cover photo size?
Upload at 851 x 315 pixels as a JPG, ideally under 100KB. Keep anything that has to be read inside a centred area of roughly 640 x 312, because that is the part visible on both desktop and mobile.
Why is my Facebook cover photo cut off on mobile?
Because mobile shows a narrower, proportionally taller crop than desktop does. Desktop displays about 820 pixels of the width and mobile about 640, so anything near the left or right edge disappears on a phone.
What is the safe zone for a Facebook cover photo?
A centred box of about 640 x 312. Facebook does not publish one, so this is the overlap between the width mobile shows and the height desktop shows, which is the area no crop can remove.
Is the Facebook cover photo size the same for a Page and a personal profile?
Close enough that one file works for both. Both use the same 851 x 315 upload and both crop more narrowly on mobile. The profile picture overlaps the cover in slightly different places, so keep that corner decorative either way.
Should I put my phone number on my Facebook cover photo?
No. A cover is a flat image, so a number on it cannot be tapped, copied, searched or read by a screen reader. Put it in the Page's contact fields, where Facebook can actually use it.
How we researched this
- The article separates two things that most cover photo guides run together: the size you upload, and the area that is actually visible once Facebook has cropped it for two different screens. The first is one number. The second is the reason people keep getting this wrong.
- Facebook publishes an upload recommendation and does not publish a safe rectangle. The safe area in this article is therefore derived rather than quoted: it is the overlap between the width mobile shows and the height desktop shows, which is the part neither crop can remove. The working is printed so it can be argued with.
- The display figures, 820 by 312 on desktop and 640 by 360 on mobile, are the ones the maintained size references agree on and were cross-checked on 31 August 2026. Facebook's widely reported recommendation of a JPG at 851 by 315 under 100 kilobytes is treated as an upload target, not as a safe area, because it is not one.
- One limitation on sourcing, since we link a platform help centre below. Those pages build their text through scripting and we could not read them to quote from, so nothing here is presented as a quotation from the platform. The help centre is linked because it is the canonical page for a reader to check, not because we lifted wording out of it.
- Nothing in this article was measured off our own screens with a ruler. Where a number is somebody else's measurement rather than a published specification, it says so.
- We sell a tool that makes social posts. It does not make Facebook cover photos, which is said plainly in the disclosure rather than stretched into a pitch.
Sources
