Drop a 1080×1920 image and see exactly what Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts will draw on top of it. The check runs in your browser — the file never leaves your computer.
Pick the apps you post to, drop the file in, and read what each one covers. The overlay is drawn from the same numbers PostPop renders against.
Drop an image to check it, or read the numbers below — the page works either way.
Pixels on a 1080×1920 canvas. Keep every word inside; let backgrounds and shapes use the whole frame.
| Platform | Top | Bottom | Left | Right | Safe area |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instagram Avatar, story progress bars and the close button at the top; the reply bar, send button and sticker tray at the bottom. | 250 | 250 | 0 | 0 | 1080 × 1420 |
| TikTok For You / Following tabs and search at the top; caption, sound and username at the bottom; the action rail down the right. | 130 | 484 | 60 | 180 | 840 × 1306 |
| YouTube Shorts The progress bar at the top; Subscribe and the video title at the bottom; engagement icons down the right. | 100 | 380 | 0 | 140 | 940 × 1440 |
| Safe on all three | 250 | 484 | 60 | 180 | 840 × 1186 |
It is a square with less room and a lot of background around it. 840 × 1186 of usable area against 1080×1080 — wider only in ratio.
Which is why the background and the shapes should run to the edges. The safe box is for words.
No platform publishes an organic safe-zone spec. The rows above are what each interface actually covers — reply bar, caption block, action rail — rounded outward. Working values, not a standard.
One figure is published, and it answers a different question: Meta’s guardrail for paid creative — 14% top, 6% sides, 35% bottom, drawn over your creative in Ads Manager. Far stricter, because an ad also has to clear the CTA sticker.
Organic rows for posts. The blue one for paid. Averaging them squeezes a headline into the middle third for nothing.
| If you are running ads | Top | Bottom | Left | Right | Safe area |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meta ads guardrail PUBLISHED BY META Meta’s unified 9:16 zone for Facebook and Instagram Stories and Reels ADS (March 2026): 14% top, 6% each side, 35% bottom. Ads Manager draws this box for you at review. | 269 | 672 | 65 | 65 | 950 × 979 |
Use the organic rows for posts and this one for paid. Averaging the two is how a story ends up with its headline squeezed into the middle third for no reason — which is why PostPop keeps them apart, and renders organic posts against the organic numbers.
The top 250px is chrome and the bottom 484px is caption and buttons, so the eye-level band is roughly y 300–1100. That is where a headline belongs on every one of the three.
It is the instinct from print and it is wrong here: the bottom of a story is the busiest part of the screen. Put the ask directly under the headline and leave the bottom to the background.
The safe box is for words. Colour, shapes and photography should run to the edges — a design that stops at the safe line reads as a square that was letterboxed, which is exactly what it is.
On a 1080×1920 canvas, keep everything 250px from the top and 250px from the bottom. The top is the avatar, the story progress bars and the close button; the bottom is the reply bar and the sticker tray. That leaves 1080 × 1420 of usable area.
No, and it is the tightest of the three. TikTok covers 484px at the bottom with the caption, sound and username, and 180px down the right with the action rail. Its top is only 130px, which is why an image designed for Instagram usually survives TikTok's top and loses its bottom.
Yes, if you design inside the union of all three: top 250, bottom 484, left 60, right 180 — 840 × 1186. That is smaller than a square post, which is the part most people get wrong: a story is not a square with extra room.
No. The file is read with a FileReader and drawn to a canvas in your own browser. Nothing is sent to a server, nothing is stored, and the page works the same with your network disconnected.
Not as a specification, and TikTok says plainly that its own safe area changes with caption length and add-ons. These are the widely used working values, rounded to be safe rather than exact. Always preview the real post before it goes out.
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