A social safe zone checker shows where TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts UI overlays — like/share buttons, caption area, music ticker — will sit over your video content. Upload or preview your vertical video to see which parts get covered before you publish.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where do TikTok UI elements cover video content?
TikTok takes the top 6% of the screen for its status row and tabs, the bottom 18% for the caption, music ticker and progress bar, and the right 13% for the action rail and the search icon above it. What none of them touch is a rectangle anchored at the left edge, 87% of the frame width by 76% of its height — 940 × 1460 px on a 1080 × 1920 export. TikTok publishes no fixed pixel safe zone, so treat those figures as measurements of current app builds, not as a specification.
Are safe zones different for TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts?
Yes — each platform puts its chrome somewhere slightly different. TikTok's action buttons sit on the right with the caption at bottom-left. Instagram Reels starts that same button column 40 px lower and reserves a far deeper bottom band. YouTube Shorts adds a full-width nav bar underneath its title block. Switch two on at once and the green rectangle shrinks to whatever both of them leave alone.
Why does Instagram reserve so much more of the frame than TikTok?
Because Instagram's number is the only one any of these platforms publishes. Meta's Marketing API guidance for Reels ads says to keep the bottom 35% of a 9:16 creative free of text and logos — 672 px of a 1920 px frame — so that is the band drawn here. It is ads guidance and it is deliberately conservative: the organic Reels caption block sits higher than that on most builds, so you probably have more room than the overlay shows. Text kept out of it is safe either way, which is why it is the figure used.
What happens to the safe zone if I upload 16:9 footage?
A 16:9 clip in a vertical feed is scaled to the full screen width and letterboxed, so it occupies a 1080 × 607 px strip in the middle of a 1080 × 1920 screen. The status bar and the caption block land in the black bars and never touch the clip at all, which takes the top and bottom insets to zero. The action rail does not move, so it covers 76% of the clip's height instead of the 31% it covers in a 9:16 frame. Switching this tool to 16:9 shows that, rather than restating the vertical percentages against a wider frame.
What aspect ratio should I use for short-form vertical video?
All three major platforms (TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts) use 9:16 aspect ratio (1080×1920 pixels). Filming in 9:16 natively avoids letterboxing and maximizes screen real estate. If repurposing from 16:9 horizontal footage, you will lose significant frame area.