A vertical full-screen format
Stories and Reels fill a phone screen: 9:16, which is 1080 × 1920 pixels. That is a much taller shape than a feed post, so a standard landscape or square photo needs to be adapted rather than uploaded as is, otherwise Instagram will either add large coloured bars or crop it automatically in a way you did not choose.
Fit your picture to a story
- Drop your image on this page. The 1080 × 1920 size is already selected.
- For a vertical photo, crop to 9:16. For a horizontal one, either crop to the part that matters or fit the whole picture on a coloured background so nothing is lost.
- Download and add it to your story.
Keep text and faces out of the danger zones
The top and bottom of a story are covered by the app’s own interface: the profile name and progress bar at the top, and the reply box and buttons at the bottom. As a rule of thumb, keep important text and faces away from roughly the top 250 pixels and the bottom 250–350 pixels of the 1920-pixel height, so nothing is hidden behind the interface. The middle is the safe area.
- Put the subject in the middle third. That is the area least likely to be covered.
- Make text big. Stories are viewed for a couple of seconds on a small screen.
- Leave room at the bottom for the reply bar. Do not put a call to action there.
- Use a high-contrast background behind text so it stays readable on any phone.
For a feed post instead, see Instagram post size. The Instagram photo size guide covers stories, Reels covers and the profile picture too.