Open the free square face generator and follow along.
Discord crops every avatar into a circle, so always start with a 1:1 square. The app renders avatars at 128×128 px but upscales for high-DPI screens, so a 256×256 or 512×512 px PNG looks noticeably sharper than a 128×128 upload. Keep files under 8 MB (Discord's ceiling) and export PNG for pixel art. Animated GIF avatars only move with Nitro and should stay at 128×128 px. Steps: 1) generate your square face at 512×512; 2) export PNG with a solid or transparent background; 3) verify your character sits inside the central 80% because the circular mask slices the corners; 4) upload via User Settings → My Account → Edit User Profile.
TikTok shows your profile photo as a circle roughly 110 px wide on phones, but upload 200×200 px at minimum — 1080×1080 px is the safe master, since TikTok downscales anything larger. Accept JPG or PNG, and keep the file small (under 2 MB uploads instantly). Because the circular mask trims about 15% from each corner, centre the face: eyes near the horizontal midpoint, with a 10% margin on every side. Pixel-art avatars gain from doubling: draw at 32×32, then export 320×320 with nearest-neighbour scaling so blocks stay square. Steps: Profile → Edit profile → tap your photo → upload → drag the square crop until it matches your export.
YouTube recommends an 800×800 px square PNG or JPG for channel avatars. The minimum is 98×98 px and the file limit is 4 MB. Animated GIFs are not supported on YouTube avatars, so animation is wasted here. Your 800×800 artwork appears at 98×98 px on the channel page, 48×48 px in comments, and 24–32 px in compact feeds — meaning detail below 24 px vanishes. Test by shrinking your export to 32×32 before uploading. Steps: export 800×800 PNG with hard edges, open your channel, click the avatar → Edit → Change picture, then crop; YouTube forces a square, so keep the face inside the middle 90%.
GitHub displays your avatar as a square with rounded corners, up to 460×460 px on your profile page. Upload at least 200×200 px; 500×500 px PNG is the sweet spot and keeps the file small. Steam is stricter: avatars are exactly 184×184 px, shown at 64×64 px in friends lists and 32×32 px beside comments, with a 1 MB file limit and JPG/PNG/GIF support — GIF animation only plays in the small version. One 512×512 master PNG covers both: downscale to 500×500 for GitHub and 184×184 for Steam using nearest-neighbour resampling so pixel edges stay crisp instead of blurring.
Build a single 512×512 px RGB PNG master, then downscale per platform with nearest-neighbour (never bicubic) resampling to keep pixel edges hard. Keep the canvas 1:1 — Discord, TikTok and YouTube all force square crops, and GitHub and Steam store squares too. Export PNG-24 for flat colour blocks; use JPEG at quality 90+ only when a platform caps file size. Size targets: Discord under 8 MB, YouTube under 4 MB, TikTok under 2 MB, Steam under 1 MB. Always preview at 32×32 (feed size) and 128×128 (comment size) before uploading. Finally, avoid transparent edges — a solid background reads better inside circular masks and prevents halos in dark mode.