WhatsApp Carousel Images Are Square Without Card Text and Wide With It
We sent four test carousel templates to a real phone. Card text decided the image shape, button count did not. Here is the test, what Meta documents, and the other carousel rules the API enforces.
By WapiSnap Team
When we added carousel templates to WapiSnap, the first thing we noticed on a real phone was that the card images did not keep one shape. Some carousels showed square images. Others showed wide ones. Nothing in our code changed between them, so we ran a small test to find out what decides it.
Short answer: card text. If the cards have text, WhatsApp shows the image wide. If they do not, it shows the image square. The number of buttons made no difference.
What Meta documents
Meta's guide for media card carousels says only that header media "is automatically cropped to a wide ratio based on the WhatsApp user's device." It gives no pixel sizes and no ratio, and it does not say the shape depends on anything else. The one rule that touches text is about height: if any card has body text, every card must have it, so the cards stay the same height.
So the docs describe a wide crop. What we saw is a little different, which is why we tested it.
The test
We created four marketing carousel templates on a live WhatsApp Business account. All four used the same three product photos, the same message body, and the same button labels. Only two things changed: whether the cards had text, and whether each card had one button or two. We sent all four to an iPhone and compared them.
| Buttons per card | Card text | Image shape |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | none | square (about 1:1) |
| 2 | none | square (about 1:1) |
| 1 | yes | wide (roughly 16:9) |
| 2 | yes | wide (roughly 16:9) |
Card text switched the shape every time. Going from one button to two changed nothing.
The caveat matters: this is one device, one WhatsApp version, and four templates. Meta does not document this behavior, so it could differ on Android or change in a later release. Treat it as an observation, and check your own carousel on the phones your customers use before a large send.
What to do with it
- Choose the shape first. If you want square product shots, leave card text off. If you want wide banners, add card text to every card.
- Keep the subject centered. A tall bottle or a handbag photo gets cropped hard when the frame turns wide. Leave margin above and below the subject so either crop works.
- Do not mix. Meta already requires card text on every card or none, so the shape stays consistent within one carousel. Use the same kind of image on every card.
- Check the preview where you can. The image you upload as a review sample is only a sample. The real image is chosen at send time, and it gets cropped the same way.
Other carousel rules the API enforces
While testing we hit a few rules that are easy to get wrong:
- Every card needs at least one button. Meta's guide calls card buttons optional, but creating a carousel without them fails with error 2388312, "All carousel cards should have at least one button."
- Buttons must match on every card. Same types, same order, one or two per card, and quick replies and the other buttons must each stay together as a group.
- The card count is fixed when you create the template. An approved 3-card carousel always sends exactly 3 cards.
- Carousels are marketing templates only, with 2 to 10 cards and up to 160 characters of text per card.
How WapiSnap handles this
WapiSnap's template editor builds carousels visually and checks all of these rules before anything is sent to Meta, so you find out in the form, not from an API error. The phone preview draws the card images square or wide to match what we measured, and the send forms tell you which shape a template will use. You can send a carousel from a broadcast, an automation, a journey, the inbox, or the API, with one image or video link per card.
If you see different behavior on your devices, we would like to know.