How do I crop or resize a Reel on Instagram?

Crop, scale or rotate a clip in the app

From Instagram’s help for editing reel clips, read on 11 October 2026 in its iPhone edition, where the buttons may sit differently from the Android app:

1. Record a clip or select one from your gallery.
2. Tap Edit video at the bottom left. The tools shown include Scale, Crop, Rotate, Undo and Redo.
3. Select the individual clip you want to change.
4. Tap Crop at the bottom right.
5. Pinch the screen to scale, resize or crop the video.

To rotate a clip, select it, tap Crop and pinch the screen while rotating your fingers. In the timeline you can undo or redo up to 20 individual actions, with the arrows above the timeline. Instagram’s page on recording a reel puts the same Edit video button on the screen after you tap Next.

The shapes Instagram accepts

From Instagram’s page on reel size and aspect ratios:

• Shape: between 1.91:1 and 9:16.
• Quality: at least 30 frames per second and at least 720 pixels.
• Cover: 420 × 654 pixels recommended, a ratio of 1:1.55, as a PNG or JPG. Right now you can’t edit the cover after you’ve uploaded it.
• Highest quality: turn on Upload at highest quality under Profile, Menu, then Media quality. A reel may take longer to upload.

Through Instagram’s API, which scheduling tools use, Meta’s reference says the required shape is between 0.01:1 and 10:1 and recommends 9:16, with 23 to 60 frames per second, up to 300 MB and 3 seconds to 15 minutes.

How much of a clip is left at 9:16

9:16 is the tallest shape Instagram’s page lists. A clip wider than that has to lose its sides to fill the screen. The widths below are our arithmetic, not Instagram’s: the piece of each frame, at its full height, that is as wide as 9:16 needs.

Take the 1920 × 1080 landscape clip. Cut to 9:16 at full height it is 608 × 1080, and 608 of 1920 is 32% of the width. Filling a 1080 × 1920 frame with that piece enlarges it 1.78 times: it has 608 real pixels across where the frame has 1080. A landscape clip inside the 1.91:1 range doesn’t have to be cropped at all, because Instagram’s page accepts it as it is; the page doesn’t say how it is shown.

What Instagram’s pages don’t say

• How a video outside the range is fitted. The page gives the range and says nothing about what happens to a clip outside it.
• A pixel size for a Reel in the app. It names a minimum of 720 pixels and a cover size, and no recommended frame. The 9:16 recommendation is in the API reference.
• Whether a cover can be changed later. It can’t, right now, by the page’s own words.

For length and the other limits, see how long a Reel can be. The three short-video networks’ shapes are on one page.

Preparing a Reel before you post it

The crop tool is Instagram’s. If you cut a video elsewhere, make it 9:16 at 1080 × 1920, or any shape inside 1.91:1 to 9:16. The free video checker tells you whether a file’s shape, length, resolution and size fit Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and the free safe zone checker shows where the app covers a vertical frame.

Mellow Hub publishes a video to Instagram as a Reel through the API, with its caption and a cover. It does not crop or resize the video: it sends the file as it is, and Instagram judges the shape when it fetches it.

The first 3 posts are free, however many networks each one goes to, and need no card. After that Hub is paid: plans start at $19 a month (Solo), after a 7-day trial with a card on file that costs nothing if you cancel before it ends, and a monthly plan's first month is 20% off. Publishing is unlimited on every plan, under a fair-use ceiling that stops automated floods (900 publications a month on Solo), where one publication is one post on one account, so a post sent to five networks counts as five toward it. There are no automatic overage charges.