Safe zone checker for Reels and Stories

Drop in a vertical video or image and see it on a phone screen with the areas the app covers marked: the account name at the top, the caption and buttons at the bottom. Scrub through a video to check every frame. Free, and your file never leaves your device.

Free · No sign-up · Nothing leaves your browser

Top 14%
Your account name, the audio and the close or camera buttons.
Bottom 35%
The caption, the like, comment and share buttons, and any call to action.
Sides 6%
Cropped on phones taller than 9:16.

These are Meta’s published zones for Instagram and Facebook Reels and Stories. TikTok and YouTube Shorts put their buttons and captions in the same places, but don’t publish fixed numbers; on TikTok, the longer the caption, the more of the bottom it covers. Your file stays on your device.

Three habits for vertical video

  • Text in the middle

    Put titles and captions you’ve burned in between a fifth and three fifths of the way down. That’s clear on every app.

  • Faces high, not low

    The bottom third is where the caption and buttons sit. Frame people so their face is above it.

  • Shoot 9:16

    Record at 1080 × 1920 so nothing is cropped, and keep the edges free of anything that matters.

Schedule Reels, Stories, TikToks and Shorts from one calendar in Smartplannr, with covers for Reels and Shorts. See the Instagram scheduler.

Questions

Meta advises leaving 14% of the top, 35% of the bottom and 6% on each side free of text, logos and other key elements. On a 1080 × 1920 video that’s about 269 pixels at the top, 672 at the bottom and 65 at each side.

Both put the account name, caption and buttons in the same places, but neither publishes fixed numbers. TikTok says the safe area shrinks as the caption gets longer, so keep captions short when the video has text low down.

1080 × 1920 pixels, a 9:16 shape. Anything else is cropped to fill the screen.

No. It plays from your device inside your browser, and nothing is sent to us.

More free resources

Checked. Now schedule it.

Smartplannr publishes Reels, Stories, TikToks and Shorts at the time you choose. Start free.

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