Safe Zone Checker

Safe frame margins in pixels

Every vertical feed reserves the same three areas: a strip at the top, a rail of buttons down the right, and a caption block at the bottom. What changes between platforms is how much they take.

These are the margins the checker overlays, converted to pixels on a 1080 × 1920 frame. The last column is the rectangle left over — the actual safe frame.

TikTok is the tightest of the three. It reserves the most on both the right rail and the caption block, so a layout that survives TikTok survives Reels and Shorts unchanged.

What sits in each reserved area

• Top strip. Status bar, search, and the platform's own navigation. Nothing you place here is reliably visible.
• Right rail. Like, comment, share, and the sound disc. This is the area people most often lose a logo behind.
• Bottom block. Handle, caption, audio attribution, and any CTA the platform adds. Also where a progress bar appears.

The rails are not fixed forever. Platforms move their interface, and a longer caption pushes the bottom block further up than the overlay shows. Treat these as working margins, not a guarantee.

Designing to the safe frame

Keep text and logos inside the safe rectangle, but let the picture run to the full frame. Cropping your footage to the safe area wastes the edges — you want the background behind the interface, just nothing important there.

Generate at the full 1080 × 1920 and compose inward. A subject centred horizontally and sitting slightly above the midline clears the right rail and the caption block on all three platforms at once.

How the Safe Zone Checker works

The tool draws your frame onto a 1080×1920 (9:16) canvas — the native resolution of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Drop in a still image, scrub a video to the exact frame you care about, or start from a blank frame to plan a composition.

On top of that frame it overlays platform-accurate UI masks. The red regions are where the app's own interface — captions, action buttons, status bars — sits over your video in the feed. Anything important that lands inside a red region risks being hidden from viewers.

A green or amber text box shows where a caption, headline, or face would sit. Drag it anywhere on the frame. It turns green when it clears every UI region and amber the moment it overlaps one, with a written reason for each collision. A dashed rule-of-thirds grid helps you align the subject to a strong compositional line.

Everything runs locally with the Canvas and FileReader APIs. Your media is read on your device and never uploaded. When you are happy with the layout, export an annotated PNG to drop into your editing brief or share with an editor.

Why the TikTok safe zone matters

A vertical video has two different rectangles: the frame you export and the area viewers can actually see uncovered. The platform UI claims the edges, so a caption that looks perfectly centered in your editor can end up half-hidden behind the like button or the caption strip in-feed.

Getting this wrong is one of the most common reasons hooks underperform. If the first line of on-screen text is covered for the first three seconds, you lose the scroll-stopping moment that drives watch time. Keeping your hook, key value prop, and CTA inside the safe zone is a cheap, repeatable win.

The safe zone differs slightly per platform. TikTok has the most aggressive right rail and caption block; Reels is a touch lighter; Shorts puts the title and channel name along the bottom. Designing to the tightest common area — the center column — keeps a single export safe across all three.

When to use it

Use the checker before you finalize on-screen text on any UGC ad, hook clip, or repurposed vertical video. It is fastest as a pre-flight step: load the frame where your biggest text appears, drag the box over it, and confirm it is green before you render the final cut.

It is also useful at the planning stage. Start from a blank frame, place the text box where your headline will go, and you have a layout target before you shoot or generate a single second of footage. Editors can work straight from the exported PNG.

Generate vertical video that fits the frame

The cleanest fix for safe-zone problems is to compose vertically from the start instead of cropping a landscape clip. Playcut generates 9:16 video and stills natively, so your subject and text room are built into the shot rather than salvaged in the edit.

You can plan a vertical clip, then generate it in the Playcut AI video generator and check the result against this safe-zone overlay. To go from idea to a rendered vertical video in one place, start a Playcut trial and create your first 9:16 clip.

Frequently asked questions

What is the TikTok safe zone?

The TikTok safe zone is the central area of a 1080×1920 vertical video that the app's interface never covers. The right action rail, the bottom caption and CTA strip, and the top status bar all sit over your video. Keep text, faces, logos, and product details in the center so the UI does not hide them.

What are the safe-zone dimensions for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts?

All three use a 1080×1920 (9:16) frame. Roughly: TikTok reserves the top ~8%, a right rail of ~22%, and a bottom ~22%. Instagram Reels is lighter at top ~6%, right ~18%, and bottom ~20%.

YouTube Shorts reserves the top ~7%, right ~20%, and bottom ~18%. These approximate fractions shift with app updates, so verify on a device.

Does this tool upload my video or image?

No. The checker runs entirely in your browser with the Canvas and FileReader APIs. Your media is read locally, drawn onto a canvas, and never sent anywhere. The annotated PNG is generated on your device.

Why does my text keep getting covered even inside the frame?

The visible frame and the usable safe zone are not the same. Text that looks centered can still land under the caption strip or behind the right action buttons in-feed. Drag the box over your real frame — if it turns amber, move it toward the center until it is green.

Can Playcut generate vertical video that respects the safe zone?

Yes. Playcut generates 9:16 video and stills directly, so you compose for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts from the start. Pair this checker with the aspect ratio and frame-counter tools to plan the shot, then render the vertical version in the studio.