Guide · 2 min read · Updated 4 October 2026
Why Facebook shows your 360° photo flat — and how to fix it
You upload a beautiful 360° panorama and Facebook shows a long, distorted strip instead of a photo you can drag around. Almost always the image is fine — what’s missing is a few lines of hidden metadata that tell Facebook “this is a 360° photo”. Here’s why it disappears and how to put it back without re-saving the picture.
What Facebook needs to show a 360° photo
- A JPG in the equirectangular format: a full sphere is exactly twice as wide as it is tall (2:1).
- GPano (“Photo Sphere”) XMP metadata inside the file, saying it’s a panorama and how much of the sphere it covers.
- Partial panoramas (for example 180°, or a drone sphere without the sky) also work, but only if the metadata describes how much they cover.
Phones, 360° cameras and drones write this metadata automatically. The problem starts when the photo passes through something else.
Why the 360° metadata disappears
- Editing and exporting. Many editors and “export for web” options drop metadata they don’t know, and the panorama tag goes with it.
- Messaging apps and cloud sharing. Sending the photo through a chat app usually recompresses it and strips the metadata.
- Stitching software that doesn’t write GPano at all.
- Cropping to the wrong shape, so the image is no longer 2:1 and Facebook no longer trusts it as a full sphere.
The fix: add the 360° metadata back
- Open 360° metadata fixer and add your panorama JPG(s).
- Choose A full 360° sphere (2:1). For a partial panorama, choose A partial panorama and set its horizontal angle; for a drone sphere with the sky missing, choose Ground only.
- Press Start and download the file. Only the metadata is written — the picture itself isn’t recompressed, so there’s no quality loss.
- Upload that file to Facebook directly from the device it’s on (not via a chat app).
Check before uploading: open the fixed file in the 360° photo viewer. If it looks right there, Facebook will show it the same way.
Still flat? Check these
- Upload it as a photo post and give Facebook a minute to process it before checking.
- Size: very large panoramas take longer to process and are downscaled anyway; 8K (8192 × 4096) is a good size for sharing.
- Shape: if you cropped the panorama, re-stitch it or mark it as a partial panorama with the right angle.
- The original: if you still have the separate drone photos, stitching them again with the panorama stitcher gives a clean 2:1 sphere with the metadata already included.
Frequently asked questions
Does adding the metadata change my photo?
No. The fixer writes a small metadata block and copies the image data byte for byte, so quality and size stay the same.
Does it work for Google Photos too?
Yes. Google Photos, Google Maps and most 360° viewers read the same GPano metadata.
Can I post a 360° photo on Instagram?
Not as an interactive 360°. A popular alternative is a tiny planet — a square image made from the sphere with the tiny planet maker.