Having an animated cover photo on your Facebook page can be an effective way to grab attention and stand out in the news feed. Animated Facebook covers allow your photos to come to life when viewed on desktop and mobile devices. While creating an animated cover may seem complicated, it’s actually quite simple if you follow a few steps.
Why Use an Animated Facebook Cover?
Here are some of the key benefits of using an animated cover photo:
- Makes your page more eye-catching – Motion attracts attention, so an animated cover will make your page stand out.
- Lets you showcase creativity – Animated covers allow you to get creative and show off your style.
- Engages viewers – An animated cover encourages people to stop scrolling and interact with your page.
- Shows off your brand personality – Animation brings your brand to life and lets you exhibit personality.
- Provides information – You can use animation to communicate key information about your business.
In short, animated covers help your Facebook page make an impact and leave a lasting impression on visitors.
Facebook Cover Dimensions
To create your animated cover, you’ll first need to know the correct dimensions. Facebook cover photos display differently depending on the device:
- Desktop – 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall
- Mobile – 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall
To ensure your cover displays properly across all devices, create your image or animation at 820 x 360 pixels. This fits both desktop and mobile requirements. Keep your key visual elements within the safe area of 820 x 312 pixels to avoid cropping on desktop.
How to Make an Animated Facebook Cover
There are a few different ways to create an animated cover photo for Facebook:
1. Use an online animated cover creator
The easiest option is to use an online cover photo maker that allows you to customize animated templates. Some popular tools include:
- Fotor – Provides professionally designed animated cover templates.
- Canva – Offers simple drag-and-drop creation of animated covers.
- Animoto – Uses artificial intelligence to automatically create animated covers.
These tools make it simple to personalize a template with your own text, logos, imagery, and more. Most also provide options for adjusting animation speed, color schemes, and layout.
2. Design in Photoshop or GIMP
For more advanced customization, you can create an animated cover directly in Photoshop or free software like GIMP. The process involves:
- Setting up your 820 x 360 canvas.
- Designing individual frames of animation.
- Using layers, transparency, and frames to animate your artwork.
- Exporting the final animation as a GIF.
This gives you pixel-level control over the entire creative process. But it requires graphic design and animation skills to pull off effectively.
3. Convert a video into a GIF
If you already have a promotional video or motion graphics content, you can convert it into an animated GIF cover as follows:
- Crop and edit your video to 820 x 360 pixels.
- Use a GIF converter like GIPHY to turn the video into an animated GIF.
- Optimize the GIF with edits and compression to keep file size low.
- Export the optimized GIF for use as your cover image.
Going from video to GIF lets you repurpose exiting assets. But keep in mind the short length and limited frame rate of GIFs when sourcing your original video.
Facebook Cover Photo Specs
To ensure your animated cover both loads quickly and plays smoothly, optimize it with these specs:
- File format: GIF
- Resolution: 820 x 360 pixels
- Frame rate: 10-15 FPS
- Length: 3-5 seconds
- File size: Under 5 MB
Sharper resolution, higher frame rates, and longer durations will increase file size. Compressing your GIF and limiting frames, colors, and length can help shrink the file.
Uploading Your Animated Facebook Cover
Uploading your finished animated GIF cover to Facebook is easy:
- Access your Facebook page and click “Update Cover Photo”
- Select your 820 x 360 GIF file from your computer
- Adjust the positioning and click “Save Changes”
That’s it! Your animated cover will now display on your Facebook page on desktop and mobile.
Best Practices for Animated Covers
Follow these best practices when creating and implementing your animated Facebook cover:
- Spotlight your brand – Use your logo, colors, and visual identity to reinforce your brand.
- Keep it short – Animation should be 3-5 seconds long to hold attention.
- Loop seamlessly – The beginning and end frames should transition smoothly.
- Add text sparingly – Avoid excessive text that clutters the design.
- Use high contrast – Vibrant colors and sharp images attract the most eyes.
- Test first – Preview how your cover looks on both desktop and mobile.
- Refresh regularly – Change up your cover animation every few months.
Animated Facebook Cover Examples
Need some inspiration? Here are examples of great animated Facebook covers from popular brands:
Spotify
The streaming platform uses lyrics and music visualizers to create captivating, on-brand cover animations.
NASA
NASA’s cover animations showcase breathtaking imagery from space exploration and discoveries.
National Geographic
National Geographic opt for animal-centric animations to align with their brand and content.
Troubleshooting Animated Covers
If you’re having issues getting your animated cover to display properly, try these troubleshooting tips:
- Re-export it under 5MB – Large file sizes can cause loading failures.
- Use fewer colors – Too many colors increase GIF file size.
- Check the resolution – Covers must be 820 x 360 pixels.
- Reduce the frame rate – High FPS GIFs require more loading time.
- Clear browser cache – Cached images may not refresh correctly.
- Reload the page – Refresh your browser to load the latest cover version.
Properly optimizing and exporting your GIF will solve most display issues. But you can also tweak the settings or try reloading if needed.
Conclusion
Animated Facebook covers provide an excellent way for brands to stand out, showcase creativity, and highlight their visual identity. The process involves creating a short, optimized GIF animation at 820 x 360 pixels using online templates, Photoshop, or video conversion.
The end result is an eye-catching, dynamic cover that engages your audience and brings your page to life. Just keep it relevant, branded, and captivating. With the right animated cover, your Facebook presence will become hard to ignore.