Audit
Judged at grid size
A cover frame is picked on a full-screen editor and viewed as a thumbnail roughly the size of a postage stamp, which is why so many of them are unreadable in the only place they matter.
Preview
Not interactive yet
Your cover
frame at 0:02 with three lines of overlay text
- Grid tile: text unreadable
- Search result: face not identifiable
- Suggested: 3 words, high contrast
Three steps
How it will work
View it small
Shrink it to grid size. If you cannot read it there, nobody can read it anywhere it appears.
Count the words
Three or four is the working limit on a cover. Anything more becomes texture.
Check the crop
Profile grids crop to square, feeds do not. A cover composed for one is often cut apart by the other.
What it is for
Why this one is worth having
The grid is where covers matter
A cover frame does almost nothing in the feed, where the video autoplays. It does everything on your profile, in search, and on browse surfaces.
Contrast beats detail
At thumbnail size only the large shapes survive. A beautifully composed frame with subtle tones reads as a grey square.
Square crop is not optional
Profile grids are square on all three platforms. A cover whose text sits in the vertical extremes loses it entirely.
Available now
What you can already do
Safe zones and crop behaviour are the same problem in a different place, and the safe zone checker covers where the platform chrome lands.
Safe zone checkerFAQ
Thumbnail tester, asked and answered
Do cover frames affect reach?
Not in the feed. They affect profile conversion and search click-through, which are the surfaces where someone is choosing between videos rather than being served one.
Should the cover have text?
On the profile grid it usually helps, because it turns a wall of similar frames into a scannable list. Keep it to three or four words.
Can I change a cover after posting?
On most platforms yes, and it is worth doing for anything that is still getting search traffic months later.
More tools
Others in the same corner
- 9:16 safe zone checkerEvery platform paints its own buttons over your video, in different places, and none of them show you that while you are editing..
- Video title generatorA title is written in a text box that shows you sixty characters and displayed in a feed that shows about forty.
- Profile auditEnormous effort goes into the video that earns a profile visit and almost none into the profile, which is the only screen where the follow decision is actually made..
The product is further along than the tools
Ten free videos, no watermark, and no card to start.