Manage your channel branding

Starting November 1, 2021, monetizing creators must turn on 2-Step Verification on the Google Account used for their YouTube channel to access YouTube Studio or YouTube Studio Content Manager. Learn more

Brand your channel's identity by updating your profile picture, channel banner, and video watermark.

Change your profile picture

Change your profile picture in YouTube Studio. Your profile picture is the image shown to viewers on your channel, videos, and publicly attributable actions across YouTube.

Sign in to YouTube Studio.
From the left menu, select Customization Branding.
Click CHANGE and select an image. Change the size of your image, then click DONE.
Click PUBLISH. It may take a few minutes for your profile picture to update across YouTube.

Profile picture guidelines

Your profile picture must follow our Community Guidelines and meet the following criteria:

JPG, GIF, BMP, or PNG file (no animated GIFs)
800 X 800 px image (recommended)
Square or round image that renders at 98 X 98 px

Change your banner image

Your banner image shows as a background at the top of your YouTube page.

Sign in to YouTube Studio .
From the left menu, select Customization Branding.
Click CHANGE and select an image. To make changes, select a preview and change the crop, then click DONE.
Click PUBLISH.

Note: Your banner image shows differently on computer, mobile, and TV displays — larger images may be cropped.

Banner image guidelines

Your banner image must meet the following criteria:

Minimum dimension for upload: 2048 x 1152 px with an aspect ratio of 16:9.
At the minimum dimension, the safe area for text and logos: 1235 x 338 px. Larger images may get cropped on certain views or devices.
File size: 6 MB or smaller.

How to resize images

You can use your computer's image editor or an online image resizer to resize the images. For example, you can use Preview on an Apple computer or Microsoft Photos on Windows.

Add your video watermark

You can encourage viewers to subscribe to your channel by adding a video watermark to your video. When you add a video watermark, viewers can directly subscribe to your channel when using YouTube on a computer.

Sign in to YouTube Studio.
From the left menu, select Customization Branding.
Select your display time:
- End of video: The video watermark will show for the last 15 seconds of the video.
- Custom start time: The video watermark will begin showing at a time you choose.
- Entire video: The video watermark will show throughout the entire video.
Click CHANGE and select an image. Change the size of your image, then click DONE.
Click PUBLISH.

Note: Video watermarks aren’t available on videos set as made for kids. If you previously added a video watermark, but your video is now set as made for kids, viewers won’t see the watermark.

Video watermark guidelines

Your video watermark must meet the following criteria:

Minimum 150x150 pixels.
Square image less than 1 MB in size.

Availability

The channel watermark is available in landscape view on computers and mobile devices (not clickable on mobile). Channel watermarks do not show on custom YouTube chromeless players or Adobe Flash.

Video watermark metrics

You can get metrics in the Subscription source report in YouTube Analytic.

Watch how to manage your channel branding

Watch the following video from the YouTube Creators channel on how to update your profile picture, channel banner, and video watermark.

Customize Your Channel Branding & Layout: Add a Profile Picture, Banner, Trailer, Sections, & more!

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