Reels & TikTok covers

What your profile grid shows.

Your cover is what people see on your profile before they tap. Check a Reels cover against what Instagram asks for, and see a cover or a TikTok frame the way each app’s grid crops it, with the counts it draws on top.

Your cover

A cover image for a Reel, or a frame from your video for TikTok (TikTok’s cover is a frame you pick in the app).

Grid shapes and badges measured 2026-10-13 in the Instagram and TikTok Android apps. The iPhone apps weren’t measured.

Instagram’s recommendation doesn’t match its grid

Instagram’s Help Centre recommends a 420×654 cover, about 1:1.56. But the Reels tab on your profile shows covers at 9:16, which is taller. Instagram’s developer documentation says a cover that isn’t 9:16 is cropped to its middle 9:16, so a 420×654 cover loses about an eighth of its width. A 9:16 cover, the same shape as the video, shows whole. The posts grid on your profile is different: it shows each Reel at 3:4, so a 9:16 cover loses an eighth at the top and an eighth at the bottom there. (Instagram’s developer documentation says the middle square; the app shows 3:4.) Keep the title near the middle.

TikTok crops a quarter off

TikTok’s profile grid shows each video at 3:4, so a 9:16 frame loses a quarter of its height, an eighth at the top and an eighth at the bottom, so keep a cover’s text away from the top and bottom edges. The play count sits over the bottom-left corner, and pinned videos get a label at the top left.

How this was measured

Neither app publishes how its grid shows covers. The tile shapes and badges were measured from Android screenshots of a Reels tab, a posts grid and a TikTok profile, three tiles across. That both grids crop from the centre was checked against the original: for Instagram, the same Reel opened; for TikTok, the full covers of the same videos. The iPhone apps weren’t measured.