Instagram story size
Your profile row sits over the top, the reply bar over the bottom.
Cropped in your browser · your image is never uploaded
1080 × 1920, a 9:16 vertical. The dimensions are the easy part. What catches people is that roughly the top 14 percent and bottom 20 percent are covered by Instagram’s own interface.
How to use the instagram story size
A story is never shown clean. Your profile picture and name sit across the top, the reply bar across the bottom, and on a Reel the caption and the like, comment and share buttons cover the bottom right as well. Anything you need read has to live in the middle band: roughly the central two-thirds. The other thing worth knowing is that stories and Reels use the same canvas but not the same safe area: a Reel loses more at the bottom and a chunk of the right-hand side too, so a story reposted as a Reel often has its caption sitting underneath the buttons.
Questions
1080 × 1920 pixels, 9:16.
Roughly the top 14 percent and the bottom 20 percent. Keep anything important in the middle.
Same canvas, different safe area. Reels lose more at the bottom and some of the right side to the caption and buttons.
Because it was not 9:16 and Instagram cropped it to fit. Match the ratio and it stops.
Yes, and it will be shown letterboxed or cropped depending on how far off it is.