Placement Pixels Ratio
Feed, vertical 1080 x 1350 4:5
Feed, square 1080 x 1080 1:1
Feed, landscape 1920 x 1080 16:9
Reels 1080 x 1920 9:16
Stories 1080 x 1920 9:16

Meta sets out which ratios each placement supports in best practices for aspect ratios across placements.

Why Facebook is the awkward one

Because a single upload can be shown in more than one place. The same video might appear in the feed, in Stories and in Reels, and each of those is a different shape. Something composed to fill a 9:16 Reel gets cropped when it appears as a 4:5 feed post.

That is the actual reason to care about safe zones on Facebook, more than on any other platform: you are not designing for one frame, you are designing for the intersection of several.

One recording reframed three ways: vertical, square and widescreen.

The rule that survives all of them: keep the subject and any text within the centre square of your frame. A centre-safe 9:16 video crops acceptably to 4:5, 1:1 and 16:9. A 9:16 video with text near the top and bottom does not.

The tracking behind a face-aware crop is Apple's Vision framework, detecting on the device so the frame can follow a speaker with no server in the loop.

Which one should you export?

  • Posting once, to the feed, for people scrolling on a phone: 4:5.
  • Posting the same file to Facebook, Instagram and TikTok: 9:16, composed centre-safe.
  • A recorded talk, a webinar, a demo people will watch deliberately: 16:9.

Length, and what it does to shape

Shape and length interact on Facebook more than people expect. A 9:16 Reel is a format people expect to be short and to loop. A 16:9 feed video is a format people expect to sit through, or ignore.

Posting a four-minute landscape talk as a Reel does not fail on dimensions - it fails because the shape sets an expectation the content does not meet. Choose the ratio that matches the watching behaviour you want, then cut to fit it.

The first frame is the thumbnail

Facebook shows a still from the video before it plays, and in a feed that still is doing all the work. Whatever ratio you export, check what the opening frame looks like frozen: a half-blink, a mouth mid-word or an empty screen is a poor advertisement for the next thirty seconds.

The cheap fix is to start on something deliberate - a face looking at the camera, a title card, a finished result - rather than on whatever the recording happened to begin with.

Where the interface sits

Reels and Stories on Facebook behave like their Instagram counterparts: buttons up the right, caption and audio along the bottom. Feed video is gentler, but the post text sits directly beneath and the first frame is what a scroller judges.

For the type sizes that stay readable once a feed shrinks them, see how to add text and titles to a video.

Getting one recording into several shapes

The work is the reframe, not the export. A horizontal screen recording or talking-head clip can be reframed rather than re-shot - how to resize a video for TikTok, Instagram and YouTube covers the mechanics, and it applies to Facebook placements too.

Common mistakes

  • Assuming one upload looks the same everywhere. Feed, Reels and Stories crop differently from the same file.
  • Composing to the edges. Anything outside the centre square is the first thing lost when a placement crops.
  • Posting long landscape video as a Reel. The shape promises something short and looping; a four-minute talk breaks that promise before it starts.
  • Leaving the first frame to chance. Facebook freezes it in the feed, and a mid-blink still is doing your advertising.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best video size for Facebook? 1080 x 1350 at 4:5 for feed video, 1080 x 1920 at 9:16 for Reels and Stories, 1920 x 1080 at 16:9 for landscape.

What aspect ratio does Facebook Reels use? 9:16, the same as Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts.

Can one video work in every Facebook placement? Only if it is composed centre-safe. Each placement crops differently, so anything important near the top or bottom of a 9:16 frame will be cut in a 4:5 or 1:1 view.

Does Facebook still support square video? Yes. 1:1 at 1080 x 1080 remains a sensible choice when the same file is posted in several places.

Should Facebook video be 4K? Not usually. Feed playback does not reward it and 1080p uploads and starts faster.