Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist: Photo Sizes and Privacy

Published 17 October 2026 · by Tekiba

What Craigslist says about images

We read Craigslist's help pages on images and on HTML in postings on the publication date above. The HTML page sets the number:

Please use CL image upload for up to 24 images.

The page on adding images explains which one leads, and what to do when an upload stalls:

This will be the image shown when users browse the site or open a posting.

If you are having trouble uploading images, please try resizing your image, using a .jpg filetype, and making sure that you have a strong connection to the internet.

That is all Craigslist says about the file: no pixel size, no shape, and no file-size figure. It also notes that images are optional and are not offered in every posting type. The first image you upload is the one browsers see, so put your clearest, plainest picture of the item first.

What Facebook Marketplace says about photos

Facebook's help article Sell something on Facebook Marketplace reduces photos to one step:

Click Add photos to upload a photo of your item from your computer.

We found no pixel size, shape, count or file-size limit for Marketplace photos on Facebook's help pages. Our article on resizing photos to 2048px for Facebook covers where the often-quoted 2048 figure comes from and where it is not documented. In practice a phone photo uploads as it is; making it smaller first mainly saves time on a slow connection, which is Craigslist's advice too.

The part of the photo you cannot see

A photo straight off a phone is more than a picture. It usually carries EXIF data: the phone model, the time it was taken, and, if location was on for the camera, the GPS latitude and longitude, usually precise enough to point to a single building. For a photo of a sofa taken in your living room, that position is your home.

On a marketplace for shipped goods that might matter little. On Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, where most sales are local and buyers often come to the door, it matters more: the listing already says roughly where you are, and a precise position in a photo would say exactly where.

Whether that position survives the upload is the sites' business, and neither says. Craigslist's image pages do not mention metadata. Meta's Privacy Policy lists, among the information it uses, "Metadata about content and messages, subject to applicable law", without saying, on the page we read, whether location inside a listing photo is kept, removed or shown to anyone. We have not tested either site, and a test on one day would say nothing about the next. The plan that does not depend on them is to remove the location yourself, before the photo leaves your phone or computer. Our guide to removing location data before selling goes into the detail.

The picture itself can give a place away too: a house number through a window, a street sign, a letter on the table. Clearing EXIF does nothing about those, so look at the background before you post.

A watermark on a private sale

Neither site says anything about watermarks. Sellers sometimes add one so that a scammer cannot lift the photos for a fake listing of the same item; a mark makes that harder, but it only discourages copying, and anyone can crop or paint over one. If you add one, keep it small and off the item: a buyer wants to see the condition, and a mark across a scratch looks like hiding it. Your name or a short word in a corner is enough, and your username is better than your full name.

Clearing, resizing and marking a batch in your browser

1. Drop the photos in. Open SignetDrop and add the listing photos. They are read in the page and never uploaded.

2. Set the size. Set Resize to Longest edge at 2048, which is also the free version's ceiling: a 4032×3024 photo becomes 2048×1536. That is plenty for a listing and much quicker to upload than the original.

3. Add a mark if you want one. Type your username, set a modest size and pick a corner, with the margin pulled in so it stays clear of the item.

4. Download the ZIP. The copies are saved again from a canvas, which leaves the EXIF behind: no GPS position, no phone model, no time. Keeping EXIF is a paid option, works JPEG to JPEG only and is off unless you switch it on, and a free batch is cleared whatever the box says.

If you only want to see what a photo carries before you decide, our EXIF check page reads it in your browser and shows the GPS position, if there is one, without changing the file.

What this does not do

It prepares the photos you post. It does not post them, read the picture for street signs or house numbers, or change what a site does with a file once it has it, and what each site does with a photo after you post it is not ours to control. The sites can change their help pages, too. Output above 2048px and larger batches are in the paid version, $29 once, with the full split on the pricing panel, and SignetDrop never writes its own name onto your photos.

Questions