Instagram Reels safe zone checker

The bottom band is the expensive one. Your account name, the caption, the audio ticker, the follow button and the playback progress bar all live there, and on an ad so does the call to action. Meta’s retired guidance put it at the bottom 35%, which on a 1920px canvas is about 670px. That is a third of your frame gone before you start.

The one figure Meta still publishes is stricter: Reels ads carrying disclaimers should keep the bottom 40% clear of text, logos and key creative. It is the only number left on Meta’s live safe zone page, and it is worth treating as the real floor.

The top band holds the status bar, the Reels header and the camera icon, roughly the top 14%. The right edge carries the action rail with like, comment, share, save and the spinning audio disc. Meta has never published a width for that rail, so any figure you see for it is somebody’s measurement rather than a spec.

Export at 1080x1920. Meta handles anything else in one of two ways on taller phones: it zooms your creative, which can crop content that was inside the safe zone, or it shows it at 9:16 against a black background. You do not get to pick which one happens.

The grid is a separate problem. Instagram moved profile thumbnails to portrait in 2025, so the crop your Reel gets on your own profile is not the square that older templates were built around. If the cover frame matters, check it as a portrait crop.