9x16 Aspect Ratio: Pixel Sizes and a Free 9:16 Cropper

Instagram Reels and Stories, TikTok, YouTube Shorts and the Facebook Reels and Stories placements are all full-screen vertical formats, and all of them recommend 1080×1920 at 9:16. A photo or video in another ratio is not rejected – the app letterboxes it with bars or crops it – but a true 9:16 file fills the screen with nothing cut off. Platform specs change, so check the current help page before a big campaign.

Buttons, captions and the account name sit on top of the picture, so text and logos placed at the very top or bottom can be covered. As a rule of thumb, keep the key words and the product away from roughly the top 250 px and the bottom 340 px of a 1080×1920 frame (Meta's guidance for Stories ads). Put the hook and the product in the middle band.

Changing a 16:9 or 4:5 photo to 9:16 by pulling the edges distorts faces and products. Cropping keeps shapes true: this tool cuts a 9:16 window out of your picture, and you choose which part with the drag and zoom. If the photo is landscape, only a narrow strip will fit – for a product shot, shoot or choose a photo with space above and below the product. We tested it on 2026-10-28 with a 1600×1000 landscape picture on a phone-width screen: at zoom 1.4 the download came out exactly 1080 × 1920 px.

Any size where height = width × 16 ÷ 9 is 9:16. Width 600 gives 1067 (rounded), width 750 gives 1333. Use whole numbers that divide by 9 – 540, 720, 810, 1080, 1440 – for exact pixels with no rounding.

Our ad-maker builds 15-second vertical 9:16 product videos from one photo. It is opening soon; the ad examples show the structures that keep running in the Meta Ad Library.