Instagram Reels safe zone checker for Stories, TikTok and Shorts

How to use the safe zone checker

1. Pick the platform: Instagram Reels, Instagram Stories, TikTok or YouTube Shorts.
2. Choose a frame. A video frame, a screenshot or a design works, as a JPG, PNG or WebP. If it is not 9:16, pick Fill the frame (crop) to cut the edges, or Fit inside (bars) to keep the whole picture with black bars.
3. Read the picture. Solid red is official guidance. Amber stripes are the approximate guide. Anything inside a shaded zone can be covered by the app. The table lists the keep-text-inside rectangle for each layer in pixels and percent of a 1080 x 1920 canvas.
4. Drag the test box to where your headline or caption will sit. For each layer it says whether the box overlaps a zone, how much of it, and how far past the safe edge it reaches. You can also type exact numbers or move it with the arrow keys.
5. Download the transparent overlay PNG to use as a guide layer in your editor, or your image with the overlay baked in to send for review. Both files are 1080 x 1920 and show the layers that are switched on.

Official guidance and the approximate guide

Official guidance is a number the platform itself prints. This is what exists today:

Every official figure here is for ads. Meta notes that on screens taller than 9:16 it may zoom an ad, which crops outside the safe zone, or add a black background. Neither Instagram nor TikTok publishes margins for organic posts, so the checker cannot call any organic margin official. Sources: Meta Ads Guide for Reels, Meta Business Help on safe zones, Google’s YouTube Shorts Ads page and TikTok’s In-Feed ads page, all read on 2026-10-19.

The approximate guide fills that gap. It is a rule of thumb, rounded from figures that several creator guides repeat: 108 px at the top, 320 at the bottom, 60 on the left and 120 on the right for Reels and TikTok, and 250 px at the top and bottom for Stories. Those guides disagree with each other, by 100 px or more at the bottom, and none cites the platform. Apps change and phones differ, so treat the amber zones as a starting point. We offer no approximate guide for YouTube Shorts because the guides disagree too much to pick one.

If you post an ad, follow the official layer. For an organic post, the approximate layer shows where the interface usually sits, and the official layer is stricter at the bottom. Text that clears both is the safest.

Instagram Story safe zone and TikTok safe zone

Meta’s ad pages give the same 14%, 35% and 6% for Reels and Stories ads. The approximate guides differ: a Story has a reply bar and a profile row, so its bottom margin is smaller than a Reel’s caption and audio area, and Reels and TikTok both stack their buttons down the right-hand side. Some guides give Stories a 20% bottom margin. Meta’s current ad pages do not.

People searching for an IG safe zone usually mean one of these two: pick Reels or Stories above.

Fill or fit when your image is not 9:16

Instagram accepts reels with an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 9:16, and 9:16 at 1080 pixels wide is 1080 x 1920. A landscape frame therefore has two choices: crop it to fill the tall canvas, or keep it whole with bars. The note under the upload says how much is cropped or how tall the bars are, so you can see what you give up. For the sizes themselves, see the Instagram Reel size and TikTok video size guides. To change the shape of a video, see how to change video aspect ratio.

Limits

The checker works on one still frame, not on a video. Fill crops from the center. It does not know your caption length, your phone, or the current version of the app. Check a draft on a real phone before you post.