Every platform publishes pages of video specifications, most of which change quietly and none of which you should need to memorise. The good news is that underneath the churn, the system is stable: a small set of aspect ratios covers everything, and a handful of craft rules matter more than any pixel count. Here is the working reference we use in 2026, current at the time of writing, with the caveat that platforms move and the ratios move far slower than the length limits.
Four ratios cover everything
- 9:16 vertical, 1080 x 1920. The native shape of Instagram Reels and Stories, TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Facebook Reels. If you master one format for social, master this one.
- 4:5 portrait, 1080 x 1350. The tallest shape the Instagram and Facebook feeds display without cropping, it occupies more screen than square or landscape, which is the entire argument for it.
- 1:1 square, 1080 x 1080. The safe all-rounder for feeds, and a sensible choice on LinkedIn where desktop viewing is common.
- 16:9 landscape, 1920 x 1080. YouTube proper, website embeds, presentations and long-form on LinkedIn.
Full-screen mobile playback. When a viewer taps a video to full screen on a phone, 9:16 vertical fills almost the entire display. Squarer and landscape ratios play letterboxed — black bars either side of the content — so if maximum screen coverage matters to the message, deliver 9:16.
Plan a shoot so the material crops cleanly to all four and the same footage serves every channel, which is the craft covered in our one shoot, month of content guide.
Platform notes: Instagram and Facebook
Reels are the centre of gravity on both platforms and want 9:16 at 1080 x 1920. Feed posts display best at 4:5. Stories are 9:16 and remain the home of casual, dated-in-a-day content. Maximum Reel lengths have stretched dramatically, well beyond the old 90 second cap, but the length that performs has not stretched with it: for marketing content, the strongest Reels still make their point inside 15 to 45 seconds. Treat generous limits as headroom, not a target.
TikTok
Native 9:16, 1080 x 1920, and the platform now accepts uploads running to many minutes. The cultural rules matter more than the technical ones: content that opens with its hook in the first second, looks made-for-platform rather than repurposed, and earns a rewatch, wins distribution. Business content works on TikTok when it teaches or entertains first and sells second.
YouTube and Shorts
Long-form remains 16:9 at 1080p or 4K, uploaded at the highest quality you have, YouTube's own compression rewards a good source file. Shorts are 9:16 and, as of 2026, can run up to around three minutes, though the sub-60-second Short remains the sweet spot for reach. Shorts and long-form feed each other: the Short is the discovery surface, the channel and its long-form content are where the subscriber value accrues.
The feed happily plays 16:9, 1:1 and vertical, and with heavy desktop viewing, square and landscape remain entirely respectable choices, vertical is no longer mandatory for reach the way it is on TikTok. Upload natively rather than pasting a YouTube link, native video autoplays in the feed and external links do not. Captions are non-negotiable here, LinkedIn is watched in open-plan offices, on mute, more than anywhere else.
Safe zones: the spec everyone forgets
On every vertical platform, the interface itself sits on top of your video, username, caption text, action buttons down the right edge, and anything important placed under them is simply lost. The working rule: keep titles, supers and key action inside the middle of the frame, treat roughly the top 15 percent and bottom 20 percent as no-go zones for text, and keep clear of the right edge on Reels and TikTok. Nothing marks a video as repurposed faster than a caption hidden behind a like button.
Export settings that just work
- Container and codec: MP4 with H.264 remains the universally safe delivery format, with AAC audio.
- Resolution: 1080 wide for vertical and square, 1080p or 4K for 16:9. Never upscale weak source footage, platforms compress it further.
- Frame rate: match your source, and keep it consistent within an edit.
- Bitrate: generous rather than starved, platforms re-compress everything, and a starved upload compounds into mush.
The rules that outlive every spec change
Design for sound-off, caption everything. Win the first second, the scroll decides there. Post natively on each platform. And when a spec matters for a paid campaign, check the platform's current documentation on the day you build the media plan, limits change quietly and this guide, like every guide, has a publication date.
Accessibility is part of the spec sheet
Treat accessibility as a delivery requirement rather than a virtue, because it doubles as performance. Captions serve deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers and the silent-scrolling majority in the same stroke, accurate ones, checked against names and technical terms, not raw auto-captions. Text on screen needs contrast and duration, if a super cannot be read aloud comfortably before it cuts, it is decoration. Avoid strobing and rapid flash sequences, which are a genuine harm risk as well as a platform policy issue. And where a video carries essential information, a transcript nearby catches everyone the player fails. Government and enterprise clients increasingly specify these requirements formally, so building them into every master by default means never retrofitting a deliverable to win the work, and it is cheaper to do once, properly, at export.
We deliver every project mastered per platform, correct ratios, safe zones respected, captions burned or sidecar as each channel prefers, as part of social media production. If your content needs to work everywhere at once, tell us where it is headed and we will handle the matrix.
