Channel art is one image asked to work on several screens that disagree about how much of it to show. A television shows the entire 2560x1440 canvas. A phone shows a strip less than a third of that height. Design for the wrong screen and your channel name gets cut off on mobile, where many visitors first see it. Here is how the crops work, the exact numbers behind them, and a layout method that survives all of them.
One upload, several slices.
YouTube takes a single 2560x1440 upload and cuts a different region out of it for each device. TVs get the full image, while computers, tablets and phones get a short wide band that leaves room for the rest of the channel page. All the crops are centred, so only the middle of your design appears everywhere.
That central region measures 1546x423 pixels, and it is the only rectangle you can trust. Everything outside it is background that some viewers will see and others will not.
The phone view is the one to design for first. It shows the banner as a thin ribbon above the channel tabs, and it is the tightest crop of all. Every larger screen simply reveals more background around that same centre.
Read it bottom up.
This is what each screen shows from a 2560x1440 upload. The desktop width depends on the browser window, so treat 2560x423 as the widest case.
Read the list from the phone upward and the rule is clear: mobile sets the layout, and each larger screen adds background around it.
Four guides, one template.
Start from the 2560x1440 canvas. The safe area is centred, so the side margin is 2560 minus 1546, divided by two, which is 507 pixels on each side. Vertically it is 1440 minus 423 over two, about 508 pixels top and bottom. Set guides at those offsets and you get a centred 1546x423 rectangle where every device's crop overlaps.
The YouTube Banner Size page saves you the measuring. Press Download template (PNG) for a 2560x1440 guide with the desktop, tablet and safe areas shaded, place it as the bottom layer in Photoshop, Figma or Canva, and hide it before you export. When the banner is done, drop it into the upload box and the page checks the size, ratio and file size, then shows what TV, desktop, tablet and mobile will display. If it fails a check, Resize to 2560 x 1440 under 6 MB crops or fits it to 16:9 and saves a JPG that meets the limit.
Designing in Canva? Create a custom 2560x1440 canvas rather than trusting any template labelled as a YouTube banner, because older templates in circulation can place their guides in the wrong spots.
The core carries meaning, the edges carry mood.
Text placement follows from the geometry. Channel name, tagline and upload schedule go inside the 1546x423 core, with a little padding inside it, since YouTube can place links and buttons near the banner. Keep type large. On a phone the safe area is only a few centimetres tall, and thin fonts disappear there.
Use the outer regions for material that loses nothing when cropped: skies, gradients, patterns, scenery. A useful test for any element: if losing it would hurt, it does not belong outside the core.
Contrast needs equal attention. The page around the banner changes between light and dark themes, and a busy mid-tone photo can make text hard to read in either. A soft darkening layer behind the text area keeps lettering readable without visibly dimming the artwork.
All of them avoidable.
Most broken banners on YouTube fail in one of these ways.
Full resolution, matching avatar.
Work at the full 2560x1440 from the start and keep the layered source file, because banners get updated more often than people expect. If artwork needs trimming to hit 16:9, Crop Image locks the ratio cleanly, and Image Resizer brings oversized exports down to upload size without distortion.
Match the banner with a consistent avatar while the files are open. Profile Picture Resizer outputs the 800x800 YouTube channel icon alongside sizes for twelve other platforms, so a rebrand lands everywhere in one sitting.
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