YouTube recommends a 2560 x 1440 px banner at 16:9, with 2048 x 1152 px as the minimum you may upload. The part people miss is that only the 1235 x 338 px safe area is guaranteed to show on every device, so most of what gets designed is never seen off a television.
Where it shows
- Top of the channel page on desktop web
- Channel header in the YouTube mobile app
- Channel page on smart TVs and console apps
- The channel view a subscriber lands on from their Subscriptions list
The safe zone
Two things eat the banner. YouTube crops it hard as the screen narrows, down to the published 1235 x 338 px safe area measured against the 2048 x 1152 px minimum upload, and on the channel page the profile picture, channel name, subscriber count and tab row sit around and partly over the lower edge depending on layout. The full 16:9 canvas only survives intact on living room screens. Put the channel name, the posting schedule and any logo inside that centre strip and let everything outside it bleed as texture.
Quirks worth knowing
- There are three published numbers and they measure different things. 2048 x 1152 px is the minimum upload, 2560 x 1440 px is the recommendation, and the 1235 x 338 px safe area is quoted against the minimum, so scale that rectangle by the same factor if you build at the larger size.
- Television is the reason the canvas is so tall. The full 16:9 image only shows on living room screens, which is why the recommended size is far larger than any browser needs.
- 6 MB is a tight ceiling for a 2560 x 1440 px photograph. A flat or lightly textured background compresses under it without visible banding, a detailed photo often will not.
- YouTube Help explicitly says not to add shadows, borders or frames to the file. The channel page frames the banner already, and a baked in border reads as a mistake the moment it gets cropped.
- YouTube publishes no accepted file formats for the banner, unlike the profile picture where JPG, GIF, BMP and PNG are named, so fileTypes is null on this record.
- The banner is the only YouTube image where the upload size and the guaranteed visible area are published as two separate rectangles, which is why so many channels get it wrong.
Common mistakes
- Centring the channel name in the full 2560 x 1440 px canvas rather than in the safe strip, so it falls outside the visible band on a phone.
- Filling the outer area with social handles and an upload schedule that only ever appear on a television.
- Exporting a banner over 6 MB and blaming the connection when the upload is refused.
- Leaving a deliberate gap for the profile picture, which sits in different places across desktop and mobile layouts and will not stay where you planned.
What we recommend
- Build at 2560 x 1440 px, then draw the safe rectangle as a guide layer and keep every word inside it.
- Treat everything outside the safe strip as texture. A gradient, a pattern or a blurred continuation of the centre survives the crop without losing information.
- Use PNG for type and flat shapes, JPG for photography, and check the export against the 6 MB ceiling before uploading rather than after a rejection.
- Open your channel on a phone after every banner change. The crop is where banners break and it is invisible in the design file.
Common questions
Why is my YouTube banner cut off on mobile?
This is expected behaviour, not a bug. YouTube crops the 16:9 banner to a much narrower band on phones and only guarantees the 1235 x 338 px safe area, which it publishes against the 2048 x 1152 px minimum upload. Anything above or below that band is trimmed on mobile even though it shows in full on a television.
What is the YouTube banner safe area?
It is the 1235 x 338 px rectangle at the centre of the banner that YouTube says will display on every device. The figure is published against the 2048 x 1152 px minimum upload, so if you design at the recommended 2560 x 1440 px you need to scale the rectangle up by the same ratio. Channel name and logo go inside it, nothing essential goes outside.
Why won't my YouTube banner upload?
The two hard limits are 2048 x 1152 px minimum dimensions and a 6 MB maximum file size, and a refused banner has usually broken one of them. A phone screenshot is commonly under the pixel minimum and a full resolution photograph is commonly over the file size. Resize to 2560 x 1440 px and re-export at a lower JPG quality.
Do I need a different YouTube banner for TV?
No, you upload one file and YouTube crops it per device. The full 2560 x 1440 px frame is what living room screens show, so the outer area is still worth designing even though phone and desktop viewers never see all of it. Just do not put anything there that a mobile viewer needs to read.
More answers on thumbnail, carousel and cover questions are on the FAQ.