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Reels and Shorts Safe Zone Guide

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Platform figures here are a dated snapshot

Short-form interfaces are redesigned without notice and without a changelog, so every safe zone below carries the page it was read from and the day it was read. Open the source, and check the layout in the app itself, before you commit a frame to it. This dataset was last reviewed on 2026-09-15.

No platform ships with this tool right now. A safe zone is only included if someone read the figures on the platform’s own creator documentation or template and recorded that page — none of those pages could be reached when this was built, and figures from memory are exactly what the rule exists to keep out. Add a platform below from a template you have open, and everything else here works from it.

Or drag one here, or paste it with Ctrl/Cmd + V. PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 15 MB and 40 megapixels.

Your image never leaves this device. It is decoded, drawn and exported by your own browser — there is no upload, and no address field, because a remote image would break the export.

Platforms

Nothing to select yet. Add a platform below from the figures its own template states, and it appears here.

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The safe box

Nothing is selected, so the whole frame is shown as safe. That is the geometry of an empty selection, not a claim about any app.

Export

PNG is lossless and its encoder ignores this, so it is off rather than doing nothing.

1080 × 1920 px, named safe-zone-frame-yyyymmdd-hhmm

Add a platform from its own template

Open the platform’s creator documentation or its downloadable template, read what its interface covers on each edge, and enter each as a percentage of the frame. Percentages, not pixels: platform chrome scales with the viewport, so a pixel figure read on one handset is wrong on every other one. Rows are kept in this browser only, and the link and date are required for the same reason they are required of a shipped row.

About This Tool

Reels and Shorts Safe Zone Guide — see what the interface covers

A vertical video is never shown bare. The app paints its own interface over the frame — a caption block along the bottom, a column of action buttons down one side, a progress bar, a header — and whatever sits underneath that chrome is invisible on the live post. The editor you exported from showed you a clean 9:16 rectangle, so a title that looked centred and a logo that looked clear of everything are only discovered to be half-covered once the post is public. This safe zone guide draws the covered regions over a frame you supply — a cover image, a thumbnail, a keyframe screenshot — so you can see what survives before you publish. Your image is processed entirely in your browser and is never uploaded.

The safe box, and why it shrinks with every platform you add

Each platform covers a different set of rectangles. Select one and the outline shows what that app leaves alone. Select three and the tool draws the union of everything they cover, which is the intersection of their safe boxes: the area that clears all of them at once. That box is always smaller than any single platform’s, and usually smaller than people expect, which is the whole argument for looking at it rather than guessing. The readout under the frame gives the box as a share of frame area and as a pixel rectangle at 1080 × 1920, so you have a number to type into an editor.

The bar strip underneath shows one row per selected platform and four segments per row — top, right, bottom, left. It answers the question a combined number cannot: which platform is the reason your title has to move. Three apps can agree on every edge except the bottom, where one of them takes twice as much as the others, and that single row is the constraint you are actually designing around.

Percentages of the frame, not pixels

Every inset here is stored as a fraction of frame width or height. Platform interfaces scale with the viewport: an action rail measured as 120 px on one handset is a different number of pixels on a larger phone, on a tablet and in a desktop browser, so a pixel figure is correct on exactly one device and wrong everywhere else. Fractions survive the rescale, and the tool converts them to pixels only at the moment it draws or reports.

These figures are a dated snapshot, not a standard
Interface geometry is a fact about somebody else’s product, and it changes whenever that product is redesigned — without notice and without a changelog. Every platform shown here carries the page its figures were read from and the date they were read. Open that page, and confirm the layout in the app itself, before you commit a frame to it.

Images that are not 9:16

A square or landscape source is still drawn: it is scaled to fit, centred, and the empty bars are marked as outside the frame. Nothing is stretched and nothing is cropped, because a silently stretched preview would answer a question you did not ask. Seeing how little of a vertical frame a 16:9 still can fill is usually the more useful result — it says the picture needs re-framing before safe zones matter at all.

Exporting the overlay

Two downloads are offered. The annotated preview flattens your image and the overlay into one file, which is what you send to whoever asked why the caption was covering the price. The overlay on its own is a transparent PNG you can drop onto a layer in your own editor and design against directly; it is always PNG, because JPEG has no alpha channel and would fill every transparent pixel with an opaque colour.

What this tool does not do

It does not crop, resize, split or re-encode your video or your image — it produces exactly one annotated frame. It has no field for an image address, because a cross-origin image taints the canvas and breaks the export. And it makes no claim about views, reach or engagement: which pixels an interface covers is checkable, and what that does to a post is not.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Reels and Shorts Safe Zone Guide free?

Yes, Reels and Shorts Safe Zone Guide is totally free :)

Can I use the Reels and Shorts Safe Zone Guide offline?

Yes, you can install the webapp as PWA.

Is it safe to use Reels and Shorts Safe Zone Guide?

Yes, any data related to Reels and Shorts Safe Zone Guide only stored in your browser (if storage required). You can simply clear browser cache to clear all the stored data. We do not store any data on server.

What is a safe zone in a Reel or a Short?

It is the part of a vertical video frame that the app's own interface does not cover. A short-form post is not shown bare: the platform paints a caption block, a column of action buttons, a progress bar and a header over the top of it. Anything placed under that chrome — a title, a face, a logo, a price — is hidden on the live post even though it looked fine in the editor, because the editor shows the frame without the interface on it.

How does this tool work?

You load a 9:16 frame from your device — a cover image, a thumbnail or a keyframe screenshot — by choosing a file, dragging it onto the preview, or pasting it. The tool draws it letterboxed inside a 9:16 frame, tints the regions each selected platform's interface covers, and outlines what is left as the safe box. With more than one platform selected it draws the union of everything they cover, so the outline is the area that clears all of them. You can then download the annotated preview, or the overlay on its own as a transparent PNG to drop into your own editor.

Why are the insets percentages of the frame rather than pixels?

Because platform interfaces scale with the viewport. An action rail measured as 120 pixels on one handset is a different number of pixels on a larger phone, on a tablet and on a desktop browser, so a stored pixel figure is wrong everywhere except the device it was read on. Fractions of the frame survive that rescale. The tool converts them to pixels only for the readout, where it states the safe box at 1080 × 1920 so you have a number you can type into an editor.

Why does every platform figure carry a date and a source link?

Because interface geometry is a fact about somebody else's product and it changes whenever that product is redesigned, without notice and without a changelog. A stale inset is worse than no inset at all: it tells you your title is clear when it is about to be covered. So a safe zone only exists here if someone opened the platform's own documentation or template, read the figures there, and recorded the page address and the day they read it. Treat what you see as a dated snapshot and confirm it in the app before you publish.

What happens if my image is not 9:16?

It is still drawn, letterboxed into the 9:16 frame and centred, with the empty bars marked as outside the frame. Nothing is stretched and nothing is cropped. A 1:1 or 16:9 source visibly shows how much of the vertical frame it cannot fill, which is usually the more useful answer — it tells you the picture needs re-framing before the safe zones are even worth worrying about.

Is my image uploaded anywhere?

No. The file you choose is decoded by your own browser, drawn onto a canvas on the page, and encoded back into a file your browser saves locally. This site is a set of static files with no server to upload to, no account and no image endpoint, and the page makes no network request while you work. You can disconnect from the network entirely and every part of the tool still works. There is deliberately no field for an image address either, because loading a remote image would break the export.