Shorts aspect ratio checker
Type your video's width × height. We compute the aspect ratio, name the platform format it matches (9:16 Shorts, 1:1 square, 16:9 long-form), and flag the closest YouTube-Shorts-spec resolution if you're off.
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Frequently asked questions
What aspect ratio is YouTube Shorts?
9:16 vertical — taller than wide. The recommended resolution is 1080×1920 pixels (the spec YouTube optimizes their player and feed grid for). Anything between roughly 720×1280 and 1440×2560 at exactly 9:16 will upload as a Short. Wider ratios (16:9 landscape, 1:1 square) won't enter the Shorts feed; YouTube treats them as regular long-form videos.
What's the YouTube Shorts size in pixels?
1080×1920 pixels is the recommended size. The minimum that still qualifies as a Short is around 600×1067 (also 9:16). The maximum useful size is 1440×2560 — past that, you're shipping a much larger file with no visual quality gain since YouTube re-encodes at upload. For phone-recorded content that came out at 1080×2400, crop the top/bottom to hit 1080×1920 cleanly.
What's the best resolution for YouTube Shorts?
1080×1920 at 30fps or 60fps. 1080p is the sweet spot — high enough that the Shorts player serves a sharp image on every device, low enough that upload + processing finishes fast and your file size stays under 50MB. Going 4K (2160×3840) is overkill: YouTube re-encodes Shorts down to 1080p for delivery anyway, so you spend bandwidth and processing time for zero viewer-side quality difference.
How do I convert a 16:9 video to 9:16 for YouTube Shorts?
Three options: (1) Crop center to 9:16 — fast, loses left and right edges of the frame. Best for talking-head content. (2) Vertical pad — keep the full landscape frame in the middle, fill top and bottom with a blurred copy of the video as background. Looks polished but wastes vertical real estate. (3) Re-edit in 9:16 — re-frame each shot vertically. Most work, best result. Reupload's pipeline does the right one automatically based on the source content.
Why does my video have black bars on YouTube Shorts?
You uploaded at the wrong aspect ratio. If your video is 16:9 (1920×1080) but you tagged it as a Short with #shorts, YouTube fits it into the 9:16 player with letterboxing — black bars top and bottom. The fix: re-export at 1080×1920 (9:16). Either crop to vertical, or pad with a blurred background. The aspect-ratio checker above tells you the closest valid YouTube Shorts spec from your current dimensions.
Will YouTube reject my Short if it's not exactly 1080×1920?
Not reject, no — but it might not enter the Shorts feed if the aspect ratio is too far from 9:16. Anything within 5% of 9:16 (i.e. roughly 9:16 ± a couple pixels) uploads cleanly. Significantly off-aspect (16:9, 4:5, 1:1) gets categorized as a regular video, won't appear in the Shorts player, and won't get the algorithm's vertical-feed boost.
Why does my iPhone record at 1080×2400 instead of 1080×1920?
Modern phones have 19.5:9 or 20:9 displays — taller than 16:9. The native camera fills the screen with that tall aspect ratio, so recordings come out at 1080×2400 (or similar). When you upload to YouTube Shorts, the extra ~480 pixels of height either gets cropped automatically (you lose the top or bottom edge) or letterboxed (black bars). Crop to 1080×1920 in your editor before uploading to keep control of what's visible.
Are YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels the same aspect ratio?
Almost. Both target 9:16 vertical. YouTube Shorts spec is 1080×1920; Instagram Reels accepts 1080×1920 or 1080×1350 (4:5) — the latter is also valid because Reels descended from the IG feed photo format. TikTok also uses 9:16 at 1080×1920. So a single 1080×1920 export works for all three platforms — that's the de-facto vertical-video standard now.