X (Twitter) header maker
A header is 3:1 — an extreme letterbox — with your avatar punched through the lower-left corner and the crop changing between desktop and phone. It rewards a simple image and punishes a busy one.
The size
1500 × 500
- 3:1. Uploaded at 1500 × 500, displayed smaller and cropped by viewport.
- Your avatar overlaps the lower-left. Keep roughly 250px clear there.
- Phones crop the sides. The middle two thirds is what everyone sees.
Work with the letterbox, not against it
A 3:1 strip is too short to hold a whole screenshot at a readable size. Trying anyway gives you a thin band of unreadable interface.
The better move is to let the mockup run off the edges. Zoom in past the frame, tilt it so it crosses the strip diagonally, and treat the screenshot as texture rather than as information. The background gradient does the rest of the work.
Where your avatar lands
The profile picture sits over the lower-left of the header, and the display name and bio sit below it on desktop but overlap on some layouts. Anything you place in that corner is decoration for a circle.
Pan the composition right, or place the mockup so its interesting edge is in the right two thirds.
Check it dark and light
X has three themes, and the header sits directly against the page background in all of them. A composition that relies on a dark background bleeding into the page falls apart in light mode, where a hard edge appears exactly where you expected none.
The safe version is a header that reads as a deliberate rectangle in both — a defined edge, or a background dark enough that the boundary is obviously intentional. The editor's own theme toggle is a quick way to sanity-check the feel, though the export itself is unaffected by it.
Post images are a different shape
For images in posts rather than the header, the Social list has X post image at 1600 × 900. That is the shape a timeline card wants, and it is close enough to the Open Graph ratio that one export often serves both.
If you only make one image, make that one. A header is seen by people who already came to your profile; a post image is seen by everyone the post reaches.
Questions
- What size is an X (Twitter) header?
- 1500 × 500 — a 3:1 ratio. It is displayed at various sizes and cropped on narrow viewports, so keep the subject central.
- Why does my header look cropped on mobile?
- Because it is. Phones show a shorter, narrower slice than desktop. Design for the middle two thirds and treat the edges as bleed.
Make one at 1500 × 500
Drop a screenshot into the editor, pick a style, export. It runs on your own machine, so there is nothing to sign up for.
Open the editor