Profile picture sizes, platform by platform
Every major platform wants a square profile picture and every major platform crops it to a circle. The upload dimensions differ — from Pinterest's tiny 165×165 minimum to YouTube's 800×800 channel icon — but the strategy is identical: upload a clean square at 2× the display size, keep the subject inside the central 80%, and stay under the file limit. Here are the exact numbers.
The full profile picture size table
| Platform | Upload size | Max file | Resize it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1000×1000 | 4 MB | Facebook profile → | |
| YouTube channel icon | 800×800 | 2 MB | YouTube profile → |
| 400×400 | 8 MB | LinkedIn profile → | |
| X / Twitter | 400×400 | 2 MB | X profile → |
| 320×320 min | 8 MB | Instagram profile → | |
| Snapchat | 320×320 | 2 MB | Snapchat profile → |
| Discord server icon | 512×512 | 8 MB | Discord icon → |
| Twitch | 256×256 | 1 MB | Twitch profile → |
| TikTok | 200×200 min | 5 MB | TikTok profile → |
| 165×165 min | 5 MB | Pinterest profile → |
GitHub is a special case: the avatar displays at up to 460×460 px and GitHub recommends uploading at least 500×500. We cover it in depth — including the animated-GIF rules — in the GitHub profile picture guide.
Why your profile picture looks blurry (and the 2× fix)
A blurry avatar almost always means one of two things happened. Either the source image was smaller than the display size, so the platform upscaled it and invented pixels — or the file was re-compressed too hard because it exceeded the size limit or was already a heavily compressed JPG.
The fix for both is the same: export at roughly twice the largest display size. Retina and high-DPI screens render avatars at 2× pixel density, so a photo that looks fine on a standard monitor falls apart on a laptop or phone with a retina display. A 400×400 LinkedIn avatar exported at 800×800 stays crisp everywhere; the platform scales it down (which preserves quality) instead of up (which destroys it).
The circular safe area
Because every avatar is displayed as a circle, the four corners of your square upload are never shown. That has two practical consequences:
- Center the subject. A face should sit in the middle 80% of the frame. Logos with fine details near the corners lose them to the crop.
- Avoid edge-to-edge text. Circular cropping plus the small render sizes (avatars appear as small as 20×20 px in comment threads and commit lists) means anything but short, bold text becomes unreadable anyway.
JPG or PNG for a profile picture?
Use PNG for logos, illustrations, and anything with sharp edges or flat colors — JPG compression smudges exactly those details. Use JPG for photographic portraits; it's smaller and photos tolerate mild compression far better than text does. Every platform in the table above accepts both formats.
If your file exceeds the platform's limit (GitHub is the strictest at 1 MB), export at a slightly smaller resolution rather than maxing out compression — resolution loss is recoverable on retina screens; compression artifacts are not.
Resize any avatar in 30 seconds
- Open the imgsize.cc workbench and drop in your photo — it never leaves your browser.
- Pick the platform preset from the table above; the exact dimensions and file limit are applied automatically.
- Drag the crop so the subject sits centered inside the circle overlay, then export as PNG or JPG.