Twitch graphics sizes: banner, panel, overlay and emote dimensions

Yaroslav Melnyk
in
Guides
Twitch graphics sizes: banner, panel, overlay and emote dimensions

Twitch publishes fewer of these numbers than you would expect, contradicts itself on two of them, and has never published one of the most repeated figures on the internet at all. This guide separates what Twitch actually states from what has been copied guide to guide for years, and it says which is which on every line.

Every figure below was checked against Twitch's own help pages and its own image CDN on 19 August 2026. Where Twitch publishes a number, it is quoted. Where Twitch publishes nothing, that is said plainly and the working answer is labelled as ours.

Contents

Where each asset lands on your channel

Numbers in a list make you picture the layout yourself. This is the layout, with the size of each piece marked on it.

Where each Twitch asset appears on a channel page, with its upload size A schematic Twitch channel page. A profile banner strip of 1200 by 480 pixels runs across the top and stretches to the browser width. An 800 by 800 pixel profile picture sits below it, uploaded square and drawn as a circle. The video player fills the left of the page at 1920 by 1080 pixels; it shows the offline screen when the channel is not live, and a dashed band down its centre marks the portrait crop that Dual Format sends to phones. A webcam frame sits in its lower left and an 800 by 600 alert in its upper right. The chat column is on the right, showing a sub badge uploaded at 18, 36 and 72 pixels and an emote uploaded as one file between 112 and 4096 pixels that chat draws at 28 pixels. Panels run in a row underneath at 320 pixels wide and up to 300 tall. Profile banner 1200 x 480 Twitch fixes the height and stretches the width to the browser Profile picture 800 x 800 Uploaded square, drawn as a circle everywhere on Twitch Video player banner 1920 x 1080 offline screen, and the canvas your scene sits on portrait crop webcam frame 16:9, sized by you alert 800 x 600 Chat Sub badge 18 / 36 / 72 Emote 112 to 4096 one file, or the 28 / 56 / 112 set chat draws it at 28 Panels320 x 300Twitch also publishes 320 x 600 on a second page Where each Twitch asset appears on a channel page, with its upload size A schematic Twitch channel page. A profile banner strip of 1200 by 480 pixels runs across the top and stretches to the browser width. An 800 by 800 pixel profile picture sits below it, uploaded square and drawn as a circle. The video player is 1920 by 1080 pixels; it shows the offline screen when the channel is not live, and a dashed band down its centre marks the portrait crop that Dual Format sends to phones. A webcam frame sits in its lower left and an 800 by 600 alert in its upper right. Chat shows a sub badge uploaded at 18, 36 and 72 pixels and an emote uploaded as one file between 112 and 4096 pixels that chat draws at 28 pixels. Panels sit underneath at 320 pixels wide and up to 300 tall. Profile banner 1200 x 480 Profile picture 800 x 800 Video player banner 1920 x 1080 portrait crop webcam alert 800 x 600 Chat Sub badge 18 / 36 / 72 Emote 112 to 4096 Chat draws the emote at 28 px Panels 320 x 300
Every image a Twitch channel can hold, drawn where it lands. The dashed band down the player is the portrait crop that Dual Format sends to phones.

Three of these are one image each that Twitch stores and serves for you: the profile banner, the profile picture and the video player banner. Two of them are sets of files you upload in more than one size: emotes and badges. Everything else on the page, meaning your overlay, your webcam frame, your alerts and your starting soon screen, is built inside your streaming software on a 1920 x 1080 canvas and never uploaded to Twitch at all. That distinction decides which sizes are rules and which are conventions.

Every Twitch size in one place

Sizes for the assets you upload to Twitch, plus the canvas sizes your scene is built on. Click a number to copy it.

  • Profile pictureSquare, .gif, .jpg or .png, up to 10 MB. Twitch serves it back at 300 x 300.
  • Profile bannerTwitch's own figure. The height is always 480, so go wider, not taller.
  • Video player bannerThe offline screen. PNG or JPEG, and never animated.
  • PanelTwitch's stated maximum. 320 x 100 is the common convention.
  • Stream canvas16:9, at 6,000 kbps for 1080p60. Build every overlay on this.
  • Vertical canvas9:16, for Dual Format. Live to everyone since 17 June 2026.
  • Webcam frameA 16:9 slot inside your scene, not a Twitch setting.
  • AlertA browser source size, set by Streamlabs or StreamElements.
  • EmoteOne square file from 112 to 4096, under 1 MB. Or 28, 56 and 112.
  • Sub badgeUpload 36 and 18 as well. PNG, transparent, under 25 KB each.
  • Creator Badge RewardSquare PNG, never animated, under 25 KB. A separate export.
  • Highlight thumbnail16:9, minimum 1280 x 720. Live thumbnails cannot be set at all.

Two of these are ours rather than Twitch's, and both are marked in their own section below: the 1920 x 1080 video player banner, which Twitch never states but stores at that size, and the 480 x 270 webcam frame, which is a scene-composition choice with no Twitch specification behind it.

"Twitch banner" means two different images

This is the reason so many banner templates are the wrong shape. Twitch has two things called a banner and they are nothing like each other.

The profile banner is the wide strip behind your name at the top of your channel page. It is 1200 x 480 and it stretches sideways.

The video player banner is the image that fills the video player when you are offline. It is 16:9, the same shape as your stream, and most people call it the offline screen or the offline banner. Twitch calls it the video player banner in the dashboard, which is worth knowing when you go looking for the upload button.

If you searched for a Twitch banner size and got 1920 x 1080, you were given the offline screen. If you got 1200 x 480, you were given the profile banner. Both answers are correct and they answer different questions.

Profile banner: 1200 x 480, and the height is the only fixed part

Twitch's Channel Page Setup article states the size and, more usefully, exactly what it does to your file:

The recommended size for a profile banner is 1200x480px. Twitch pages (and your banner art) scale based on the width of each user's browser window. Images shorter or taller than 480px will be scaled to 480px high. Images will also be stretched if a user's browser window is open wider than the width of the image. To ensure a consistent look across all monitor resolutions, it is best to make your image as wide as possible and concentrate the graphics on the left.

Read that twice, because it is the whole design brief. The height is not a suggestion. Whatever you upload comes out 480 pixels tall. The width is whatever you gave it, and if someone's browser is wider than your image, Twitch stretches your image to fill the gap.

You can watch this happen on real channels. Pulling the stored banner for five large streamers on 19 August 2026 returned files of 1200 x 480, 855 x 480 and 566 x 480. Every one of them is exactly 480 tall, and only one is 1200 wide. The other two are being stretched on any normal desktop window, and the 566 wide one is being stretched to more than double its width.

Twitch's figureOurs, for wide monitors

So 1200 x 480 is the floor rather than the target. Going wider costs you nothing and stops the stretching, which is why we export banners at 2560 x 480. The other half of Twitch's advice matters just as much: put your logo, your name and anything you need people to read in the left portion of the image, and let the right side be texture or gradient. That side is the part that gets stretched, cropped or pushed off screen depending on who is looking.

Formats are .gif, .jpg and .png, up to 10 MB. Twitch does not say whether a GIF animates here, so treat it as a still image.

Video player banner: 1920 x 1080, which Twitch never publishes

Search for this size and you will find 1920 x 1080 on every guide including, until today, this one. Go looking for Twitch's source for it and there is nothing. Channel Page Setup is the only Twitch article that covers the video player banner, and the only technical fact on it is this:

Animated video player banners are not natively supported on Twitch.

No dimension, no file size limit, no list of accepted formats. That section of the article is also broken: its numbered upload steps are a copy of the accent colour steps above them and never tell you where the upload button is. It is under Creator Dashboard, then Settings, then Channel, then the Brand tab.

The number is still right, and here is the evidence Twitch does not give you. Every offline image Twitch serves comes from a filename ending in channel_offline_image-1920x1080. Downloading five of them from Twitch's CDN on 19 August 2026 and measuring the files returned 1920 x 1080 in every case. Twitch stores this asset at exactly 1920 x 1080 whether or not it says so.

Offline screen

Use 1920 x 1080 PNG or JPEG. Design it as the same shape as your stream, because it sits in exactly the same box, and remember that Twitch draws the play button, the channel name and the follow controls over the bottom of it. Keep your text out of the lower strip.

If you would rather not build one, our offline banner page has ready-made ones at the right size.

Profile picture: upload square, get 300 x 300 back

Twitch's account settings page is the only place it publishes anything here:

Bear in mind the maximum file size for a profile picture is 10MB, 256px width x 256px height, and limited to the following formats: .gif, .jpg, .png.

256 x 256 is Twitch's own number, and it is the first surprise. The 800 x 800 that this guide and most others have quoted for years has no Twitch source anywhere. A 2022 Twitch page still says 200 x 200 minimum, so Twitch has three different figures live at once if you count the stale ones.

What actually happens is easier to check than to read about. Every Twitch profile picture is served from a URL ending in profile_image-300x300. Checked against four channels on 19 August 2026, including Twitch's own, and the downloaded file is a 300 x 300 PNG every time.

What Twitch servesSafe upload

Upload a square image of 800 x 800 and you will be fine. It is not Twitch's number, but it is above every figure Twitch has ever named, it survives being downscaled, and it is the same file you will want for Discord and YouTube. What matters more than the pixel count is that Twitch masks it into a circle everywhere it appears. Anything in the corners is gone. Anything near the edge gets clipped on the arc.

Panels: 320 wide, and Twitch gives two different heights

The width is settled. Panels are 320 pixels wide and Twitch resizes anything wider down to fit. A narrower image is not rejected, it just sits in the 320 wide slot without filling it.

The height is where this falls apart, because Twitch publishes two different limits on two live pages.

Channel Page Setup says:

File sizes for images must be under 2.9 MB, and should be no larger than 320px wide and 300px high, otherwise they automatically resize to these maximums.

How to Edit Info Panels says:

File sizes for images must be under 1 MB. Images should be no larger that 320px wide and 600px high (otherwise they automatically resize to these maximums).

Same platform, two live pages, 300 against 600 and 2.9 MB against 1 MB. The typo is Twitch's. Neither page lists accepted file formats.

The safe reading is the strict one from both: stay at or under 320 x 300 and under 1 MB and you satisfy whichever limit is really enforced. That is what we build to.

Safe everywhereCommon in packs

Which leaves the number most people arrive looking for. 320 x 100 has no Twitch source at all. Twitch has never published a 100 pixel panel height anywhere. It became the default because it is a comfortable height for a title with a small icon, every template pack shipped it that way, and it spread. We use it too. But it is a convention rather than a rule, and you can ignore it: a tall image panel at 320 x 300 works, and so does a 320 x 60 strip under a heading.

Two things worth knowing that no size chart mentions. Panel descriptions accept Markdown and reject HTML, so links go in as [text](url). And panel images are auto-resized rather than rejected, which is why an oversized upload silently comes back soft instead of throwing an error.

Our free panel bundle has 720 ready-made panels across 20 styles plus the layered PSDs, if you would rather adjust text than draw boxes.

Your stream canvas and Twitch's aspect ratio

Twitch is 16:9. That answers the aspect ratio question for the player, the offline screen, your OBS canvas and every overlay you will ever build for it. The vertical feed added in June 2026 is the one exception and it gets its own section below.

Twitch's broadcasting guidelines publish four presets, and they have not changed in years:

Preset Resolution Bitrate Framerate Keyframe
1080p60 1920 x 1080 6,000 kbps 60 or 50 fps 2 seconds
1080p30 1920 x 1080 4,500 kbps 30 or 25 fps 2 seconds
720p60 1280 x 720 4,500 kbps 60 or 50 fps 2 seconds
720p30 1280 x 720 3,000 kbps 30 or 25 fps 2 seconds

Rate control is CBR for all four. Audio is AAC-LC at a recommended 96 kbps, with 160 kbps as the ceiling Twitch accepts. Broadcasts stop at 48 hours.

Build your scene at 1920 x 1080 even if you output 720p. Your streaming software downscales the whole composition on the way out, so a 1080p canvas that gets scaled to 720p looks better than a 720p canvas full of assets that were already scaled once. The one thing not to do is design at 2560 x 1440 because your monitor is that size, then wonder why your text is soft.

Twitch's bitrate advice is now out of date in one direction: the June 2026 update raised the ceilings to 7.5 Mbps at 1080p and 9 Mbps at 1440p for channels using Enhanced Broadcasting, and the broadcasting guidelines page has not been updated to mention it. Our streaming guide covers which of those you can actually use, and our OBS settings guide covers where each setting lives.

Overlay, webcam and scene element sizes

Twitch has no overlay specification, because an overlay is not something you hand to Twitch. It lives in OBS or Streamlabs, it gets composited into your video before the stream leaves your machine, and Twitch only ever sees the finished pixels.

Which means the only real rule is the canvas. Design at 1920 x 1080, at 72 or 96 DPI, in PNG for anything static and WEBM for anything animated with transparency. Then the individual pieces are your call:

  • Full-screen frames and starting soon screens take the whole canvas, 1920 x 1080.
  • Webcam frames match your webcam's aspect ratio, which for anything modern is 16:9. 480 x 270 is a quarter of the canvas width and the size most packs ship. 640 x 360 gives you more room for border art. Neither is a Twitch number.
  • Chat boxes tend to run 400 to 500 wide and 600 to 900 tall, which is a shape rather than a size. What decides it is the dimensions you give the browser source in OBS.
  • Stream labels and info bars can be whatever fits, but keep them out of the bottom 60 pixels or so, because that is where Twitch draws its player controls on hover.

Export at exactly the size you will use rather than scaling in OBS. Scaling a PNG down in a scene costs you a little sharpness, scaling one up costs you a lot, and neither is necessary when you control the export.

If you want the reasoning behind a layout rather than the measurements, what a Twitch overlay actually is covers the parts and what each one does, and there is a full walkthrough on building one from scratch. The other route is to start from a set of ready-made stream overlays and change the colours, which is a shorter afternoon.

Cute Cats stream overlay package by kudos.tvCute Cats overlay packageWebcam frames, chat box, stream screens, an offline banner, 11 alerts, a stinger transition and editable Twitch panels, all cut to the sizes on this page. $22.See what is in the pack

Alerts: 800 x 600, and why that is not a Twitch number

Twitch publishes nothing at all about alerts, because alerts are not a Twitch feature. They come from Streamlabs, StreamElements or a similar service, arrive in your scene as a browser source, and the size is whatever you set that browser source to.

800 x 600 is the convention almost every alert pack ships at, and it is a sensible one: it is 4:3, which gives an animation room to move without being a full-width band, and it drops into a corner of a 1920 x 1080 canvas at a sane scale. Set your alert box browser source to 800 x 600 and export your alert graphics at 800 x 600 and the two agree.

Alert canvas

Formats matter more here than dimensions. Use PNG for static alerts and WEBM with an alpha channel for animated ones. GIF works but carries a much larger file for worse colour, and an animated alert in GIF will band visibly on any gradient. Streamlabs caps uploads at 10 MB and StreamElements at 30 MB, but staying under about 3 MB keeps alerts loading quickly when several fire in a row.

More on how the pieces fit together in our guide to Twitch alerts.

Emotes: one file or three, 112 to 4096

Twitch supports two upload modes and most guides have now forgotten the second one exists.

Auto-resize mode is the default. One square file, anywhere from 112 x 112 to 4096 x 4096, under 1 MB, and Twitch generates the rest. Manual mode is still there behind a toggle, and it takes three files at 28 x 28, 56 x 56 and 112 x 112. Twitch's requirement is that all three are the same image, and each must be under 100 KB.

Manual mode exists for one reason and it is a good one. An emote that reads at 112 pixels frequently turns to mush at 28, and 28 is the size chat actually uses. If your design has fine lines or lettering, upload the small size separately with the details thickened and the text dropped.

One fileManual set

Static emotes are PNG, square, with a fully transparent background. Animated emotes are GIF, with the same size options, capped at 60 frames, and they must not flash more than three times in one second. The animated file limit is 1 MB in auto-resize mode and 512 KB per file in manual mode. The thumbnail defaults to the first frame of the GIF, which you can override with a static image if frame one is a blank pose.

Two things Twitch does not publish, so do not trust any guide that states them: there is no frame rate limit and no duration limit for animated emotes, only the 60 frame cap. And there are no formatting rules for emote names beyond the content guidelines.

Twitch also has Easy Animate, which takes a static PNG between 112 and 4096 and applies one of six canned animations: Shake, Rave, Roll, Spin, Slide In and Slide Out. It is worth trying before you commission an animator. One catch worth knowing before you spend money on animated emotes: Twitch says animated emotes play for Android users and that iOS is still pending.

Emotes are open to every monetized streamer now rather than Affiliates and Partners only, which is a change from what most guides still say. They still need approval, unless you have earned instant upload. Our emote guide covers slots and tiers, and our emote maker is there if you want one without opening Photoshop.

Sub badges, Bits badges and badge flair: 18, 36 and 72

Badges have no auto-resize mode. You upload three files, every time.

Twitch's requirements for subscriber badges are 18 x 18, 36 x 36 and 72 x 72, in PNG, with a transparent background, and each file under 25 KB. Custom Bits badges take the same three sizes in PNG. Twitch publishes no file size limit for Bits badges and does not mention transparency for them, so the sub badge rules are a safe default rather than a documented one.

Badge set

18 pixels is roughly the height of the text you are reading now. Design the 72 first, then look at it at 18 and cut everything that has stopped being legible. What survives that far down is the outline, so a badge that holds a distinct shape at 18 pixels beats a beautifully rendered one that arrives as a grey smudge.

Badge flair, the small overlay on Tier 2 and Tier 3 subscriber badges, needs six more files: 18, 36 and 72 for each of the two tiers, again as transparent PNG under 25 KB.

There is also a newer badge type that no size guide covers yet. Creator Badge Rewards, which Twitch updated on 13 August 2026, take a square PNG that must not be animated, at a maximum of 25 KB, with recommended dimensions of at least 120 x 120. That 120 does not line up with the 18, 36 and 72 triplet, so it is a separate export, and there are three slots per event to fill.

Our badge guide covers what every badge in chat means, and our sub badge packs are the shortcut if drawing at 18 pixels does not appeal.

The vertical canvas: 1080 x 1920

On 17 June 2026 Twitch launched Dual Format streaming to everyone. One broadcast now produces two views: the normal horizontal stream for desktop, and a full-screen vertical one for anyone holding a phone upright. This is the change that makes every size guide written before mid-2026 incomplete, and Twitch is direct about the number:

The vertical canvas is 1080 x 1920 (9:16). Twitch overlays its own interface (chat and controls) on top of the mobile view, so keep important visuals in the center safe zone.

Vertical canvas

Your horizontal stream keeps whatever settings it already has. The vertical one is configured separately in your streaming software, and Twitch names 720 x 1280 or 1080 x 1920 as the usual choices. In OBS you need version 32.0 or newer, Enhanced Broadcasting turned on under Multitrack Video, and Additional Canvas set to Aitum Vertical. Streamlabs, Streamrun, XSplit and Meld handle it without a plugin.

Three things follow from that if you are the one making the graphics.

  • Do not build a chat overlay into your vertical scene. Twitch adds its own on top of your video and says so outright, so a chat box in your artwork ends up sitting underneath Twitch's.
  • Your horizontal overlay furniture does not survive the crop. A webcam parked in the bottom left, and labels running along the bottom edge of a 16:9 scene, either fall outside a 9:16 frame or land under Twitch's interface. Vertical wants its own layout rather than a resized one.
  • The bandwidth is the part that catches people. Twitch's published minimum is 13.5 Mbps of upload for Dual Format at 1080p, or 12.5 Mbps if your channel has the server-side transcode support Twitch gives Partners and selected Affiliates. Add 2K and it becomes 22.5 Mbps, or 14 Mbps with that support.

One limitation to plan around: if you go live from the Twitch mobile app rather than a computer, Dual Format is not available yet. You can stream vertically, but viewers cannot switch to horizontal and desktop viewers get the vertical feed too. Vertical VODs also expire after 7 days, while the horizontal version keeps your normal retention.

What Twitch's own interface covers

Most of what you make gets partly covered by Twitch's own interface. This is the part of a size guide that saves the most rework, and it is also the part Twitch publishes least about.

On the profile banner, Twitch's guidance is the sentence quoted earlier: concentrate the graphics on the left, because that is the part guaranteed to survive stretching. No pixel figure exists.

On the video player and the offline screen, Twitch publishes no safe area at all. In practice the player draws its control bar across the bottom on hover, and the channel name, category and follow controls sit directly under the player rather than over it. Keeping your important content out of the bottom 8 to 10 percent of a 1920 x 1080 design is our rule, not Twitch's, and it has never let us down.

For vertical, Twitch does publish safe area guidance, but only as text inside a PNG diagram, which is presumably why no other guide quotes it. Transcribed from Twitch's own image:

The point where Twitch chat and overlays show over your stream depends on the Viewer's device. This is different for every device.

Twitch then gives two examples and no rule. On an iPhone 16 Pro Max, 9:16 content scales to around 440 x 782. On an iPhone 13 mini, around 375 x 666. Those are layout points rather than stream pixels, and Twitch explicitly declines to give a fixed margin because the chat overlay starts in a different place on every handset.

So any guide quoting an exact vertical safe zone in pixels has invented it. What Twitch does say is to keep your critical visuals, meaning gameplay HUD and camera, centred, and to expect the top and bottom of the frame to be covered.

Thumbnails, trailers and the rest

The stream thumbnail is the most searched size on this list that does not exist. Twitch generates the preview image of a live channel automatically, roughly every five minutes, and there is no way to upload your own. The same applies to Clips. If a tool offers to make you a custom Twitch live thumbnail, it is selling you something Twitch will not display.

What you can replace is the thumbnail on a Highlight or an uploaded video. Twitch's only published figure for those is 16:9 at a minimum of 1280 x 720, which appears on a page last touched in 2022. 1920 x 1080 is the safer export.

Channel trailers, which are Affiliate and Partner only, are video rather than art: MP4, MOV, AVI or FLV, h264 video with AAC audio, up to 10 Mbps, up to 1080p at 60 fps, and 60 seconds maximum.

Your bio is capped at 300 characters, and you get five social links.

Panel extensions are a separate thing from info panels and have their own number in Twitch's developer docs: 318 x 496, sized that way to avoid a scrollbar inside the iframe.

What Twitch does not publish

Every number below is quoted confidently across the web with nothing behind it. Knowing which figures are soft is most of the value of a size guide.

  • 320 x 100 panels are a convention, not a Twitch figure. Twitch's published heights are 300 and 600, on two pages that disagree with each other.
  • 1920 x 1080 offline screens is correct, but Twitch has never stated it. The evidence is its own CDN filenames.
  • 800 x 800 profile pictures has no Twitch source. Twitch's settings page says 256 x 256 and its CDN serves 300 x 300.
  • Frame rate and duration limits on animated emotes do not exist. Twitch caps frames at 60 and flicker at three per second, and publishes nothing else.
  • The 25 KB ceiling is published for sub badges only, not for Bits badges.
  • Channel Points reward icons have no published dimensions at all. Twitch describes the upload and stops there.
  • A fixed vertical safe zone in pixels does not exist either. Twitch says outright that it varies by device.
  • Alert, overlay and webcam frame sizes are not Twitch assets, so Twitch has no opinion on them.

If you want the sizes for the other half of your channel, the YouTube size guide covers banners, avatars, thumbnails and membership badges the same way.

Common questions

What aspect ratio does Twitch use?

16:9 for everything on the horizontal side, which is why 1920 x 1080 and 1280 x 720 are the only two resolutions in Twitch's broadcasting guidelines. Since June 2026 there is also a 9:16 vertical feed at 1080 x 1920, sent alongside the horizontal one rather than instead of it. The profile banner is the exception at 2.5:1, and it is not really an aspect ratio so much as a fixed 480 pixel height with a variable width.

What size is a Twitch banner?

Depends which banner. The profile banner at the top of your channel page is 1200 x 480 or wider. The offline screen that fills the video player is 1920 x 1080.

How tall can a Twitch panel be?

Twitch gives two answers on two live pages: 300 pixels on Channel Page Setup and 600 pixels on How to Edit Info Panels. Stay at or under 320 x 300 and you are inside both. There is no minimum height.

Can Twitch graphics be animated?

Emotes and Cheermotes can, as GIF. Video player banners cannot, and Twitch says so. Sub badges are PNG only, which rules it out. Twitch accepts GIF for profile pictures and profile banners but never states whether the animation plays, so assume it does not. Overlays and alerts animate freely because those run in your streaming software, and WEBM with an alpha channel is the format to use.

What are the file size limits?

10 MB for the profile picture and profile banner. 1 MB for an emote in auto-resize mode, 512 KB per file for animated emotes in manual mode, 100 KB per file for static emotes in manual mode. 25 KB for a sub badge or a badge flair image. Panels are either 2.9 MB or 1 MB depending on which Twitch page you read.

What size is a Twitch stream thumbnail?

You cannot set one. Twitch grabs a frame from your live stream roughly every five minutes and uses that. Only Highlights and uploaded videos take a custom thumbnail, at 16:9 and at least 1280 x 720.

Should I build my scene at 1440p if my monitor is 1440p?

No, unless you are an Affiliate or Partner streaming 2K with Enhanced Broadcasting. Build at 1920 x 1080. A 1440p canvas that Twitch delivers at 1080p means every asset gets resampled once more than it needed to.

Do I need every one of these sizes?

To open a channel, three: a profile picture, a profile banner and an offline screen. Panels come next because they are what a new viewer reads while deciding whether to follow. Emotes and badges only matter once you are monetized. A full stream overlay package covers all of them in one download, or the free packs if you want to see how a set fits together before paying for one.

Share this article
Back to Blog