Instagram Live size

Instagram’s Live Producer guide is the only place Instagram writes down numbers for Live. It lists 9:16 as the recommended shape, “recommended but not required”, and 720 × 1280 as the resolution. Many streaming programs open with a 1920 × 1080 landscape canvas, so the setting you have to change is the canvas itself, not just the output.

A well-known streaming-software guide from Streamlabs suggests 1080 × 1920 or 720 × 1280 for an Instagram-only vertical canvas. Both are 9:16. Instagram’s own recommendation is 720 × 1280, so use that unless your software or hardware gives you a reason to go higher.

You can stream a landscape video to Instagram Live. Instagram’s guide says the viewer will automatically crop the sides and zoom in to fit 9:16. The arithmetic shows how much is lost: a 9:16 window cut out of a 16:9 frame keeps only about 32% of the width, so a presenter standing off-centre, or a slide with text near the edges, can vanish.

Instagram’s own advice is to set the canvas to 9:16 even when your camera is horizontal. A 720-pixel-wide landscape feed is only 405 pixels tall, which leaves roughly 875 of the 1,280 pixels above and below for a title, captions, a logo or a second picture. Instagram’s guide names picture-in-picture and graphics as uses for that space.

Tip: Do a test stream first. Set the audience to “Practice” in Live Producer and nothing is broadcast to anyone, so you can check the cropping on your own phone.

In the app you tap the plus icon, swipe to Live, add a title, choose your audience and start. Instagram sets no size, so the whole job is framing: hold the phone upright. Instagram’s own pages do not publish a safe zone for Live either. Viewers’ comments appear at the bottom of the screen, so keep anything you want people to read, such as a held-up product or a sign, away from the lower part of the frame.

You can add up to three co-hosts to a Live, as long as you and each guest follow each other. Tap the add people icon after the Live starts, search for the username and send a request. Co-hosts appear in a shared live room, so frame yourself with space for them.

Instagram’s Live Producer guide is dated November 2022 and describes the tool as limited access at that time. It works only on instagram.com, with a stream key you paste into software such as OBS or Streamlabs as a custom RTMP destination. Check what your account can do before you plan a show around it.

• The stream key is not fixed. It refreshes every time you use Live Producer, so copy a new one each session.
• Live Rooms, Shopping, Fundraisers and Q&A are not supported in Live Producer, and neither are guests or Live Moderator.
• You read and answer comments inside the Live Producer screen, where you can pin one to the top.
• Simulcasting is not built in. A tool that streams to several places at once can send Instagram its own custom RTMP stream.
• End the broadcast in Live Producer first. If you stop the software first, the Live stays up and shows the last frame it received.

Instagram says a finished Live is stored in your archive if Live archive was turned on in your profile settings before you started. From there you can save it to your camera roll or share it as a reel on your profile. In the app, open the menu on your profile, tap Archive, then switch from Stories Archive to Live Archive. Instagram’s creator page says Lives are kept in the archive for up to 30 days.

If you plan to share the replay as a reel, remember that it started as a live video: a landscape feed with a cropped middle will still be cropped in the replay. For how reels are shaped and where their buttons sit, see the Reel size page.

One rule matters if you answer Live commenters by private message: Meta lets you send one private reply per comment, and for comments made during a Live that reply can only be sent while the Live is still running.