Free tools → Safe zones
Every vertical platform draws its own interface over your video — a caption and sound strip at the bottom, a column of buttons on the right, status and tabs at the top. Design without accounting for it and the track title lands under the share button. These are the zones, per platform, in percentages of the frame and in pixels at 1080×1920.
✨ Make a vertical video free →The same numbers SLOVO uses in its pre-export check · measured against the apps in 2026 — interfaces shift, so re-check before a big campaign
The table gives the inset from each edge that the app may cover. What remains in the middle is the safe area — the only part every viewer is guaranteed to see.
| Platform | Top | Bottom | Left | Right |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TikTok (9:16) | 7% · 134 px | 25% · 480 px | 4% · 43 px | 13% · 140 px |
| Shorts (9:16) | 9% · 173 px | 19% · 365 px | 3% · 32 px | 14% · 151 px |
| Reels (9:16) | 13% · 250 px | 21% · 403 px | 3% · 32 px | 15% · 162 px |
| YouTube (16:9, 1920×1080) | 2% · 22 px | 11% · 119 px | 2% · 38 px | 2% · 38 px |
| Square feed (1:1) | 5% | 5% | 5% | 5% |
Pixel values are for a 1080×1920 export (1920×1080 for YouTube). For 720×1280, multiply the percentages by 1280 and 720 instead.
If the same file goes to TikTok, Reels and Shorts, take the strictest edge from each: 13% at the top (Reels), 25% at the bottom (TikTok), 4% on the left (TikTok), 15% on the right (Reels). At 1080×1920 that leaves a safe rectangle from x 43 to 918 and from y 250 to 1440 — about 875 by 1190 pixels. Anything important — the title, a lyric line, a face — belongs inside it. The background can and should fill the whole frame; only the parts that must be read need protecting.
Most creators know about the caption at the bottom. Far fewer allow for the vertical column of buttons on the right — profile, like, comment, share, sound — which takes 13–15% of the width on every platform. A title aligned to the right edge sits exactly under it. Centre text, or align it left with a margin, and the problem disappears.
The bottom is the heaviest zone everywhere, and TikTok takes the most — a quarter of the height for the caption, the sound strip and the progress bar. Reels is the strictest at the top: 13% for the app's own tabs. Shorts sits between the two on both edges. The practical rule: keep text in the upper-middle of the frame, from roughly 15% to 70% of the height, and it survives all three.
Length limits differ per platform and are raised from time to time, so treat any specific number as a snapshot. SLOVO's pre-export check uses conservative defaults — 10 minutes for TikTok, 3 minutes for Shorts, 90 seconds for Reels — and warns when a clip exceeds them. Check the current limit in the app you are posting to if you are near the edge.
The editor shows the safe area for the platform you pick while you place titles, lyrics and stickers, and the pre-export check warns if anything important has drifted into a covered zone — it reports how far, so you know whether to nudge or to move. The vertical music video page covers the workflow; the lyric video maker keeps lines inside the zones by default.