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There's no single Notion cover size: Notion's help says covers are dynamic depending on the width of your window and recommends images at least 1,500 pixels wide. Most published guides land on 1500 × 600 px, a 5:2 banner, and I'd export at that size because it clears Notion's width floor and matches what nearly every guide recommends. It's a convention, not an official spec. Keep the subject in a centered horizontal band and the file under 5MB, since the visible slice moves with every window width.
For a page header people read on a laptop and a phone, upload 1500 × 600 px with nothing important near the edges. For a page that also appears as a gallery card, decide what the card should show before you design the banner, because Notion either crops the cover to fill the card or fits the whole image inside it. For a cover with a logo or a client's name on it, I'd move the words into the page title and keep the banner visual, because the crop changes with each screen and text near an edge is the first thing to go.
What does Notion say about cover size?
Notion describes cover art as “a banner image at the top of any page,” so cover, banner and header all mean the same image here. Its help page on customizing pages answers the size question in one FAQ: “The cover images are dynamic depending on the width of your window, so there's no specific size that works best. That said, we recommend using images at least 1,500 pixels wide.”
That's the whole official spec: a minimum width, with no height and no aspect ratio. Everything else comes from third-party guides, and they don't always agree. A ones.com article on perfecting cover size says “Notion recommends using images with an aspect ratio of 16:9” and turns that into 1500 × 844 px. Notion's help says nothing of the kind, and a second ones.com cover guide recommends 1500 × 600 px at 2.5:1, so one site gives two different answers.
Why does the cover crop differently on each screen?
The cover runs across the top of the page, so its visible shape follows the window rather than your file. 2sync's cover guide describes banners that “stretch to fill the full page width and crop the top, bottom, or sides depending on the window size,” and Super's cover-size guide adds that “Cover height is fixed; you can only reposition.”
The device sizes these guides publish tell the same story. 2sync lists the desktop banner at 5:2, mobile at 2.6:1 and tablet at 4:1, so the frame changes shape from one device to the next. Whatever ratio you export, some screen will show it through a differently shaped frame and trim part of it. That's why “where does the subject go?” is a more useful question than “what's the perfect size?”
What the published size advice adds up to
Nine published recommendations from eight sites give a desktop or general cover size in pixels; ones.com counts twice because its two articles disagree. The table keeps each guide's own ratio label and what it says the size is for.
| Guide | Size | Ratio the guide states | What the guide calls it |
|---|---|---|---|
| notionapps | 1500 × 600 px | 5:2 | Desktop size |
| Super | 1500 × 600 px | 3:1 | Desktop, “minimum size requirements” |
| ones.com cover guide | 1500 × 600 px | 2.5:1 | Recommended dimensions |
| ones.com “perfecting” article | 1500 × 844 px | 16:9 | Presented as Notion's recommendation, which Notion's help doesn't make |
| 2sync | 1500 × 600 px | 5:2 | Desktop minimum |
| Gridfiti | 1500 × 600 px | 5:2 | Desktop minimum |
| Bullet | 1500 × 600 px | 5:2 (2.5:1) | Desktop |
| Simple.ink | 1500 × 600 px | 3:1 | “Optimal Size” for all devices |
| The Organized Notebook | 1640 × 924 px | None stated | Its own Canva size, borrowed from a Facebook cover |
The median across the nine is 1500 × 600 px. Widths run from 1,500 to 1,640 px, with eight of nine at 1,500. Heights run from 600 to 924 px, with seven of nine at 600. The ratio labels agree far less: 5:2 or its twin 2.5:1 five times, 3:1 twice, 16:9 once and no ratio once. Super and Simple.ink both call for 3:1 while recommending 1500 × 600 px, which is 5:2, so trust the pixel sizes over the labels printed next to them.
Five of these guides (notionapps, Super, 2sync, Gridfiti and Bullet) also list 1170 × 445 px for phones and 1170 × 290 px for tablets, with identical numbers beside the identical desktop size. None of them shows how those sizes were worked out. The device trio is a convention copied from site to site, not five independent measurements, so I'd use it as a hint about proportions and nothing more.
For sharper covers on high-density screens, three guides suggest a bigger export at the same 5:2 shape. 2sync and Gridfiti's cover-size guide both name 2500 × 1000 px and 3000 × 1200 px, and Bullet's cover guide names 3000 × 1200 px, adding that “Notion will scale down, but your image will stay sharp.”
The size I'd use and where to put the subject
I'd design every cover at 1500 × 600 px. It meets Notion's 1,500 px floor, it's the size seven of nine guides publish, and one canvas reused across a workspace keeps pages consistent. If you want extra sharpness, export the same design at 3000 × 1200 px and check that the file still comes in under 5MB. If it doesn't, upload the 1500 px version.
Where the subject sits matters more than the exact pixels. 2sync suggests a safe area of “roughly 1170 x 230 px in the middle” of the canvas, while Gridfiti warns that “there's no true safe zone that's completely free from cropping at all sizes.” Both hold up: the middle band is the part most likely to survive, not a guarantee. I'd keep the subject in a centered horizontal band and give the outer edges plain color or texture.
- Canvas: 1500 × 600 px, or 3000 × 1200 px at the same shape.
- Subject: centered, with plain background running out toward every edge.
- Text: none in the banner if you can avoid it; the page title already names the page.
- File: PNG or JPG under 5MB.
Add, change, reposition or remove a cover
- Hover over the top of the page and click Add cover.
- Hover over the cover that appears and choose Change cover. A menu opens with a gallery of covers curated by Notion.
- Click Upload for an image from your computer, click Link to paste the URL of an image from the web, or search Unsplash from the same menu.
- To shift the visible slice, hover over the cover, click Reposition, drag the image up or down, then click Save position.
- To take the cover off, hover over it, choose Change cover, then Remove.
Steps 1 to 3 follow Notion's own help. Notion's help doesn't describe repositioning or removing a cover, so steps 4 and 5 come from Super's guide and Simple.ink's guide to adding covers, which says Notion lets you move a cover “only up and down.” That vertical-only drag is why the subject belongs in the middle: there's no sideways adjustment to rescue a logo sitting near the left or right edge.
For a page a client will open, I'd upload the file rather than link it. A linked cover depends on someone else's server, and 2sync warns that “hot-linked covers vanish when the source file is moved or deleted.” The Organized Notebook's cover guide notes the upside on a free plan: Link “allows you to not worry about the file size.” That trade suits a personal page better than a client one. For an Unsplash photo on a published or client-facing page, check the photo's terms on Unsplash itself before you rely on it.
Notion's gallery, new art collections and AI covers
The built-in gallery gained four collections in Notion's April 9, 2026 release, sourced from museums and public archives: natural textures from Texturelabs, Hudson River School paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chinese silk paintings from the National Museum of Asian Art, and watercolor fruits from the USDA Pomological Watercolors collection.
If your workspace has Notion AI, it can make a cover for you. Notion's March 9, 2026 release says Notion AI can now “generate and edit images right on your page,” cover images included: type /ai image or ask Notion AI in chat, then refine the result with follow-up prompts. I'd still look at an AI cover at phone width before keeping it, because it gets cropped like any other image.
Stay under the file size limit
Keep a cover under 5MB on every plan. Notion's help on images, files and media says that on the Free Plan “all files you upload must be under 5MB,” and that on a paid plan “PDFs must be under 20MB and images (PNG, JPG) must be under 5MB.” The same page's FAQ says paid plans can upload files of up to 5GB each, but its image line still reads 5MB, so 5MB is the number I'd plan a cover around.
If Notion says an image is too large to be displayed, the help suggests uploading the image as a file. That attaches the image as a file; for the cover itself, export a smaller or more compressed copy and upload that instead.
Format rarely needs converting. The help's supported types include JPEG, JPG, PNG, GIF, SVG, WEBP, HEIC, TIF and TIFF, and notionapps' cover size guide suggests “JPG or PNG for optimal compatibility and quality,” with JPG “for smaller file sizes and PNG for higher quality.” A JPG is the easier way to stay under 5MB at 3000 px wide.
Make covers work on gallery cards
A cover can do two jobs: banner on its page and picture on a gallery card. Notion's gallery help puts the card side under the settings menu at the top right of the database → Layout → Card preview, where Page cover “will show the image you chose as your page's cover on your card.” The other choices are Page content, which previews the page's first block, and any Files & media property, which shows the images uploaded to it.
Two more settings decide how the banner sits on a card. With Fit image on, “the entirety of the image will fit within the frame of the card”; with it off, “the image will be cropped to fill the entire card frame.” Card size is picked from a dropdown, and the help adds that you can hover over an image in a card and select Reposition to drag it where you want it.
A 5:2 banner on a card is a compromise either way: cropped, it loses whatever falls outside the card's frame; fitted, it shows whole but smaller. When the card and the page need different framing, as on a Notion client portal where each project card should carry the client's logo, I'd add a Files & media property for the card picture and leave the cover to the page. Notion shows whatever Card preview points at; which image represents a record is your decision. For card sizes and per-use settings, setting up a Notion gallery view covers mood boards, team directories and asset libraries.
Set a cover through the API
Integrations can set covers too. In Notion's page object reference, cover is a File object, and the supported types are external and file_upload. The API guide to files and media lists the page icon and cover among the places an uploaded file can go, with per-file limits of 5 MiB on Free workspaces and 5 GiB on paid ones. I'd keep API covers under 5MB anyway, so they stay inside the help's image limit whichever route uploads them. If the integration also creates the pages, creating a page in a Notion database with the API covers the request itself.
Fix a blurry, cut-off or missing cover
- Blurry or pixelated: the image is probably narrower than 1,500 px. Super says Notion “stretches smaller images to fill the placeholder space, degrading the image quality.” Upload a 1500 × 600 px or larger export.
- “Too large to be displayed”: Notion's help offers uploading the image as a file. For a cover, upload a smaller copy under 5MB instead.
- Text or a logo cut off: it sits outside the middle band, and Reposition only moves the image up or down. Move it toward the center in your editor, or take the words out of the image and let the page title carry them. Notion's help says it doesn't have “any traditional alignment options,” so a centered title takes one of the workarounds in how to center text in Notion.
- No cover on a gallery card: check that view's Card preview. Page cover shows the cover, Page content shows the first block, and a Files & media setting shows only what's uploaded to that property.
- Cover vanished from a page: if it was added with Link, the source image may have moved or been deleted. Upload the file instead.
- Looks different on a phone: expected, because the visible slice follows the window. Open the page at phone width before you share it, and nudge the subject toward the center if it drifts out.
Questions that come up next
Can I resize or zoom a cover inside Notion?
No. Gridfiti says you “can't resize your cover photo directly in Notion,” and Bullet says the same about zooming. Resize or recrop the image in an editor, then upload it again.
What size should a page icon be?
280 × 280 pixels. Notion's help says uploaded icons “should ideally be 280 x 280 pixels.”
Can a Notion cover be a GIF?
Yes. Simple.ink's guide adds animated covers the same way as still images, through Upload or Link, and GIF is on the help's list of supported types. 2sync notes that the mobile apps sometimes render GIFs as static frames, so expect a still image on some phones.
My pick and the first step
Export one cover at 1500 × 600 px with the subject in the middle band and the file under 5MB, then set it on a single page. Open that page in a wide desktop window and on your phone; if the subject survives both, reuse the canvas for every page in the workspace. Notion decides the crop for each screen. What has to stay visible is your call, and the centered band is how you make it. If the page is going public, publishing a Notion website covers the settings to check before you share the link.
