Social Media
Hashtags, fancy text and YouTube tools creators love.
About social media
Tools for the small production tasks around posting: generating hashtags, converting text into the unicode styles that render as bold or italic in bios, resizing an image to each platform's expected dimensions, and pulling a thumbnail from a YouTube video.
The image resizer solves a genuinely irritating problem, because every platform expects something different and crops without asking. Instagram feed posts are square at 1080x1080 or portrait at 1080x1350, stories and reels are 1080x1920, YouTube thumbnails are 1280x720, and a LinkedIn banner is 1584x396. Uploading the wrong aspect ratio means the platform crops it, usually through the middle of whatever mattered.
One caution on the fancy text generator. It works by substituting unicode mathematical alphanumeric symbols that visually resemble styled Latin letters โ the output is not really bold text, it is a different set of characters that look like bold. That renders correctly in most bios, but screen readers announce these characters individually or skip them, so a name written in unicode 'bold' can be unreadable to a blind visitor. Use it for occasional decoration, not for anything a reader needs to understand.
Frequently asked questions
What size should an Instagram post be?
1080x1080 for square feed posts, 1080x1350 for portrait โ which occupies more vertical space in the feed โ and 1080x1920 for stories and reels. Uploading a different aspect ratio lets the platform crop it automatically, usually badly.
Why does fancy text sometimes show as boxes?
Because it uses unicode symbols that resemble styled letters, and any device without a font covering those code points renders them as placeholder boxes. Support is good on current phones and inconsistent on older devices and some desktop applications.
Is fancy text bad for accessibility?
Yes, meaningfully so. Screen readers announce these unicode symbols individually or skip them entirely, so a bio written in fancy text can be incomprehensible to a blind visitor. Keep your name and any essential information in plain text.
Can I use a downloaded YouTube thumbnail in my own content?
The thumbnail is the copyright of the video's owner. Referencing or linking is generally fine; republishing one inside your own content normally requires permission. Downloading for research or reference is a different matter from redistribution.