TikTok is fundamentally a video platform, but the still-image surfaces around the videos matter more than people think. The thumbnail viewers see in the For You feed, the profile photo on your tile, the cover used when someone shares your video off-app. Each one has its own quirks.
Quick reference
- Video cover / thumbnail: 1080 by 1920 pixels (9:16). Same aspect as the video.
- Photo carousel: 1080 by 1440 pixels (3:4) per slide
- Profile photo: 200 by 200 pixels minimum, square, displayed as a circle
- Profile banner: not currently supported on TikTok (mobile-only profile design)
Video covers
The video cover is the still image shown in the For You feed and on your profile grid before the video plays. It is also what gets used as the thumbnail when your video is shared off-app to messaging apps or as a link preview.
Use 1080 by 1920 pixels (9:16). TikTok will pull frames from your video for the default cover, but the option to upload a custom one is always there. Use it. Default frames are almost always worse than a custom cover.
The safe zone is critical. The TikTok UI eats a surprising amount of every video frame:
- Top 200 pixels: covered by the search bar and For You / Following tabs
- Bottom 700 pixels: covered by the username, caption, music attribution, and right-side action buttons
- Right 200 pixels: covered by the like, comment, share and music tile
That leaves roughly the middle 880 by 1020 pixel area as fully visible. Keep titles, faces, and important visuals inside that box. The bottom in particular is brutal, in landscape orientation this is more than a third of the screen.
Profile photo
200 by 200 minimum, ideally 400 by 400 for sharpness. Displayed as a circle, so round-crop friendly designs only. Avoid hard corners or important content near the edges.
TikTok's profile photo also appears as a small badge on every video tile in the For You feed, at around 50 pixels. Test that your photo is recognisable at that size.
Photo carousel posts
Photo carousels became a major format on TikTok in 2024 and the engagement numbers continue to hold up. The native aspect is 3:4 (1080 by 1440), not the 9:16 you might expect.
Each slide should use the same aspect. Unlike video covers, the UI overlay is smaller for photo carousels, but you still need to keep critical content out of the bottom 300 pixels.
Photo carousels are particularly strong for storytelling, listicles, before-and-afters, and anything that benefits from sequential reveal.
What TikTok does to your image
Like Instagram, TikTok re-encodes uploads aggressively. The original quality you upload at is rarely what people see. Practical adjustments:
- Upload at 1080 wide, not higher. TikTok caps at this for display anyway.
- Use sRGB. Anything else gets converted and may shift in colour.
- Pre-compress at JPG quality 85 to 90. Letting TikTok do the compression gives noticeably worse results.
- Strip EXIF metadata. TikTok strips it on upload, but doing it locally first means GPS data never leaves your device.
Common mistakes
- Putting text or faces near the bottom of the cover. The UI overlay covers them, sometimes 30 to 40 per cent of the visible frame.
- Using horizontal images on a vertical platform. Letterboxed content gets less attention.
- Letting TikTok pick a default cover frame. Custom covers consistently outperform.
- Forgetting that the profile photo needs to be readable at 50 pixels. Test it.
Tools
Our social media cropper has TikTok video cover and photo carousel presets. The cropper centres the safe-zone area when it processes your image, so faces and text don't end up in the UI-overlay region. For batch resizing existing thumbnails to TikTok dimensions, the resize tool with the TikTok preset works in seconds.