Where do the buttons cover a Reel or a Short?

The published figures

Read on 11 October 2026, from each company’s own pages, for a 1080 × 1920 (9:16) video:

Meta gives percentages, of the video’s height for the top and bottom and of its width for the sides. Google gives pixels in a diagram on its page, marked as a 1080x1920 video with the safe zone as a red rectangle and four measurements around it; the page’s text gives no numbers.

These are figures for ads

All three pages are written for advertisers. Instagram’s own page on reel size and aspect ratios, which covers ordinary reels, lists a shape from 1.91:1 to 9:16, a frame rate and a resolution, and no safe zone (Instagram Help). YouTube’s page on uploading Shorts lists a length and a shape and no safe zone either (YouTube Help). We have not verified that an ordinary reel or Short has the same buttons in the same places as an ad, so the figures are the best published guide, not a rule for every post.

What they say they protect is plain. Meta wants key parts of a design kept from being cropped, covered by the profile icon or the call to action, or pushed against the edges of screens taller than 9:16. Google says overlays, calls to action and buttons can appear in different places depending on the format, the campaign type and the screen.

Where to put the caption and the hook: a worked example

Take a burned-in caption of three lines that you place at 1300 pixels down on a 1080 × 1920 video. It sits inside the bottom 672 pixels that both Meta and Google keep clear, which is where a profile icon, a call to action or a button may be drawn. Move it up so that its last line ends at 1248 pixels or above. If you run a Reels ad with a disclaimer, Meta asks you to leave the bottom 40% free, and then the line is 1152 pixels down (Meta Business Help).

At the top, Meta clears 269 pixels and Google 288, so a hook line should start at 288 pixels down or lower. On the right, Google keeps 192 pixels clear and Meta 65: the larger of the two is 192, so 888 across is the right-hand limit if the video goes to both.

Taller screens and a smaller player

Meta says that on a screen taller than 9:16 it may zoom the video to fill the whole screen, which can crop what lies outside the safe zone, or show it at 9:16 on a black background (Meta Business Help). Google’s page adds that for square and vertical video ads in the YouTube app, the player can compress to a 1:1 shape when someone scrolls the related content under the video, which crops the top and bottom of what is displayed (Google Ads Help). Keep the important part comfortably inside, not on the line.

TikTok

TikTok’s page says the safe zone depends on the shape of the video, the length of the ad’s caption and any additional formats, and gives downloadable safe zone files; it also notes that its ad preview can differ slightly from the live ad (TikTok Ads Manager Help). That is a page about ads, as the others are. It publishes no figures, so the free checker draws nothing for TikTok rather than a guess. Use TikTok’s own template files.

What the free safe zone checker does

The reels safe zone checker takes a picture or a video, draws the Reels and Shorts figures above on a 1080 × 1920 frame in your browser, and downloads a transparent 1080 × 1920 PNG template you can lay over the video in an editor. It uses only the figures on this page and nothing is uploaded. It does not know what is in your video or where Instagram or YouTube will draw anything on a particular phone, so it cannot say whether a post passes. The reels cover maker keeps a cover title inside the same clear area.

Posting one vertical video to several networks

Mellow Hub sends one vertical video to Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts and the other networks it supports, now or on a schedule. It does not look at the picture: where the buttons sit is yours to check before you upload.

The first 3 posts are free, however many networks each one goes to, and need no card. After that Hub is paid: plans start at $19 a month (Solo), after a 7-day trial with a card on file that costs nothing if you cancel before it ends, and a monthly plan's first month is 20% off. Publishing is unlimited on every plan, under a fair-use ceiling that stops automated floods (900 publications a month on Solo), where one publication is one post on one account, so a post sent to five networks counts as five toward it. There are no automatic overage charges.