YouTube Shorts safe zone checker
The YouTube Shorts safe zone is the part of a 1080x1920 frame that the Shorts player does not cover with the title, the channel row, the action buttons and the progress bar. Google publishes no measurements for it at all, so the only reliable check is your own frame behind the real interface.
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Google publishes nothing, so every figure is a guess
Meta at least had numbers once and TikTok ships overlay files. For Shorts there is nothing: no percentages, no pixel table, no overlay download, on any Google property. The figures that circulate, usually around 10 to 14% at the top and 20 to 25% at the bottom, are community measurements.
The bottom band is also time dependent on ads, where the call to action appears after three seconds on some campaign types and ten on others. A static template cannot express something that shows up part way through the video.
Blurred bars, not black ones
This is the detail old templates get wrong most often. A horizontal video in the Shorts feed does not get clean black bars above and below. YouTube fills that space with a blurred copy of your own frame. It reads as an accident rather than a choice, and it is the strongest argument for shooting vertical instead of cropping a landscape edit.
Google also says uploaded video should never contain letterboxing or pillarboxing bars of its own. Bake bars into your export and you get bars inside blur, which looks exactly as bad as it sounds.
Length, resolution and text limits
A Short can run up to three minutes, not the 60 seconds most guides still quote, and it is capped at 1080p, so a 4K master buys you nothing in this feed. The title takes 100 characters.
For Shorts ads Google does publish one unusually precise rule: the description is capped at 90 characters and is truncated beyond one line of text on mobile and two on desktop and TV. It is line based rather than character based, which is a good reminder that a character count is a proxy for the thing you actually care about.
Before you publish
- Shoot vertical. A horizontal clip gets blurred bands made from your own frame, not neutral black bars.
- Never export with letterbox bars baked in. YouTube says not to, and they end up inside the blur.
- Leave the bottom quarter clear. The title, channel row, action buttons and progress bar share it.
- Do not master above 1080p for Shorts. The feed caps there anyway.
Check another format
Instagram Reels safe zone checkerThe Instagram Reels safe zone is the part of a 1080x1920 frame that Instagram’s interface does not sit on.Open itInstagram Stories safe zone checkerThe Instagram Stories safe zone is the middle of a 1080x1920 frame, between the progress bars and profile row at the top and the reply field at the bottom.Open it
TikTok safe zone checkerThe TikTok safe zone is the part of a 9:16 video that the app’s interface does not cover.Open itTikTok carousel safe zone checkerA TikTok photo carousel is not a video post with pictures in it.Open it
Facebook Reels safe zone checkerEvery video you post to a Facebook Page is a Reel, whatever length or shape it is, so it gets the full screen player and the interface that comes with it.Open itFacebook Stories safe zone checkerThe Facebook Stories safe zone is the middle of a 1080x1920 frame, clear of the progress bars and Page row at the top and the reply controls at the bottom.Open itSocial media safe zone checkerA safe zone is the part of a full screen vertical post that the app’s own interface does not cover.Open itYouTube post previewerA YouTube post previewer shows the two things a viewer sees before they watch anything: the thumbnail with your title beside it, and the Short with YouTube’s interface over the top.Open it
X (Twitter) post previewerAn X post previewer shows the tweet as a timeline renders it: your text at the real width, the photo grid X builds from your images, and the engagement row underneath.Open itOr preview every platform at once with the full post previewer.
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Everything you need to know about YouTube Shorts safe zone checker from PublishQ
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Hi, I'm Alexandro 👋
I left my Software Engineer role at Amazon to build tools that solve real problems — the kind big companies ignore because they read spreadsheets instead of using their own products.
I was spending over an hour daily just scheduling 2 shorts across 3 platforms — logging in, reformatting, uploading one by one. That felt broken. So I built PublishQ . Now I create 4 shorts in 3 minutes and schedule them to 4 platforms in under 30 seconds.
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