The 3:4 profile grid and how to plan a feed that crops well

What changed in January 2025

For most of Instagram's history, the profile grid showed every post as a square. In January 2025 that changed: profile grids switched to tall rectangles. Instagram's head Adam Mosseri announced the rollout in a story on January 17, 2025, explaining that most photos and videos uploaded to Instagram are vertical and that cropping them to squares cut off too much (The Verge (opens in a new tab), checked November 2026).

Instagram has not published an exact ratio for the grid tiles. Design and press sources measure them at 3:4, three units wide for every four tall, and that matches the tallest shape Instagram now keeps for feed photos. The Help Center says photos keep their resolution when the aspect ratio is between 1.91:1 and 3:4, which at 1080 pixels wide means a height between 566 and 1440 pixels (Instagram Help Center (opens in a new tab), checked November 2026). So a 1080×1440 photo is the one shape that shows in full both in the feed and on the profile.

The change only affects the thumbnails on your profile. When someone taps a post, they still see it in the shape you uploaded. But the grid is what a new visitor sees first, and a grid of awkwardly cropped thumbnails makes a careful account look careless.

What each shape loses on the grid

By default the grid shows the middle part of a post, cut to the tall tile. How much disappears depends on the shape you uploaded. The numbers below are simple geometry for a centered crop at 1080 pixels wide:

In practice that means: 4:5 posts lose thin strips that rarely matter, squares lose their sides (a problem for text and for anything placed near the edge), and landscape photos become a narrow slice of the middle. Reels keep their width but lose the top and bottom, which is where many people put titles.

Choosing a shape for new posts

For posts you make from now on, there are two good choices:

• 3:4, 1080 × 1440

  Fills the tile exactly and uses the most screen space in the feed. Nothing is cropped anywhere. The natural choice for photos, quotes and graphics made for Instagram.

• 4:5, 1080 × 1350

  The long-standing portrait format, still fine. Keep text and faces at least 40 pixels away from the left and right edges, and the grid crop will never touch them.

Squares and landscapes still work in the feed, but plan for the crop: put the subject in the middle third of the width, or place the photo inside a 3:4 frame with a border or blurred background. Our guide to posting a full photo without cropping shows three ways to do that, and the image size guide lists the size for every format.

All the tools for this run in your browser, and your photos are not uploaded:

• The crop tool has a 3:4 preset next to 4:5, 1:1 and the others, so you can choose exactly which part of the photo stays.
• The image resizer has a Portrait 3:4 preset that exports 1080 × 1440. With Fit instead of Fill, it keeps the whole photo and fills the rest with a color, a gradient or a blurred copy.
• In the photo editor you can do both and adjust the light and color in the same pass.

Fixing posts you already shared

You do not need to delete and repost old content. Current versions of the Instagram app have an option in a post's menu, named Adjust preview in press reports, that lets you move the post inside its grid tile or fit the whole image with a plain background. It changes only the thumbnail on your profile; the post itself, its likes and its comments stay as they are. If you do not see the option, update the app.

Since June 8, 2026, you can also change the order of the grid. Instagram described the feature as "Reorder your grid": press and hold any post on your profile, choose Reorder grid and drag posts into place; changes are saved right away and visible to every visitor. Pinned posts stay at the top (Social Media Today (opens in a new tab), quoting Instagram, checked November 2026). That makes it much easier to repair a planned layout that the new tile shape broke.

A practical order for a cleanup: first adjust the previews of posts with text or faces near the edges, then the most recent row or two, because those are what visitors see without scrolling. Older rows matter less.

Planning a feed that crops well

The preview trick also helps with color. Three posts in a row with the same dominant color look intentional; one bright outlier in a muted row looks like a mistake. Our post on collage layouts has more ways to use the collage maker for planning.

Split images and puzzle grids

Some accounts cut one large picture into several posts so that the grid shows a single image across a row or across the whole screen. Those layouts were made for squares, and the switch to tall tiles broke most of them. If you want to build one now:

• Cut the tiles at 3:4. A picture spread over one row of three posts needs to be 3240 × 1440 pixels before you cut it into three pieces of 1080 × 1440. Two rows: 3240 × 2880, six pieces.
• Remember the gaps. The grid has thin lines between tiles, so a line or a face that crosses a tile edge will look slightly broken. Put the cuts through quiet areas such as sky or background.
• Post in reverse order. The newest post appears top-left, so the piece meant for the bottom-right goes up first. If something ends up in the wrong place, Reorder grid can move it.
• Every tile is also a post in someone's feed. A slice of a bigger picture often makes no sense alone, so use split grids rarely, for a launch or an announcement.

Grid questions