Aspect Ratio
Aspect ratio is the proportion between an image or video's width and height, written as two numbers such as 9:16, 1:1, 4:5 or 16:9.
Aspect ratio describes the shape of a piece of visual content as a width to height proportion, most commonly written as two numbers separated by a colon. Social media has converged on a handful of standard ratios: 9:16 (vertical, 1080x1920 pixels) for Reels, TikTok, Shorts and Stories, 1:1 or 4:5 for feed photos, 2:3 for standard Pinterest Pins, and 16:9 for landscape YouTube videos.
Getting the ratio wrong is one of the most common and most fixable content mistakes: a 16:9 video uploaded as a Reel gets shrunk with black bars on both sides, which cuts real screen space and looks unfinished on a phone. Platforms increasingly favor formats that fill the whole screen, so full bleed vertical video tends to hold attention longer than a letterboxed one.
Designing or shooting for the final ratio from the start beats cropping afterward, since cropping can cut off a face, a product or on-screen text that was framed for a different shape.
Examples
- A 16:9 landscape video reformatted to 9:16 for TikTok, keeping the subject centered instead of getting cropped at the edges.
- A Pinterest account switching from 1:1 square Pins to the recommended 2:3 ratio and seeing more Pins saved to boards.
Related terms
YouTube Shorts are vertical videos up to 3 minutes long that appear in a dedicated Shorts feed, on the home page and in search.
Captions and subtitles are on-screen text of a video's spoken words, added for viewers who watch on mute or in a different language.
Short-form vertical videos on Instagram (9:16, up to 90 seconds).
A multi-slide post (typically 2-10 images or videos) users swipe through.