YouTube Shorts safe zone, in pixels.

The YouTube Shorts safe zone is the part of a 1080×1920 Short the interface leaves clear. By CapQA's masks, Shorts covers the top 234 px, the bottom 345 px, a subscribe button at y 1480–1560 on the left and a button rail from x 936. YouTube publishes no pixel figures of its own.

All three apps play 9:16 at 1080×1920; Shorts differs at the edges. Its button rail starts at x 936, 60 px further in than Reels and within 4 px of TikTok Spark Ads, and its subscribe button sits in the lower-left corner, just above the 345 px title bar.

On a 1080×1920 frame, Shorts ads draw four regions: a 234 px top bar, an action rail at x 936–1080 between y 499 and y 1460, a subscribe button at x 48–228, and a 345 px title bar with the channel, title and call to action.

YouTube's own ad preview is the final check for a paid Short. The masks are the common layout, not every experiment YouTube runs.

Keep text between x 90 and x 926, above y 1575, and out of the lower-left corner below y 1470. Inside CapQA's 900×1400 zone that leaves everything except a 54 px strip on the right, the bottom 85 px and the subscribe button.

Captions anchored at Y=1080 and wrapped short of the rail clear all of it — that is what CapQA's Shorts preset does.

A logo parked just above the bottom rows — around y 1400–1550 — clears TikTok's organic action bar, which starts at y 1570, but on Shorts that spot is the subscribe button, y 1480–1560. Put logos top-left inside the safe zone instead, below the 234 px top bar.

CapQA's logo slot sits at x 114, y 284, 200×80 — clear of every top band and sponsored tag the masks draw.

Read the three platforms as three separate limits. The bottom limit comes from TikTok, whose Spark Ads stack starts at y 1436; the right limit from Shorts, whose rail starts at x 936; the top from Reels, whose sponsored tag reaches y 250. Text inside those lines clears all three ad placements.

One caveat for paid Reels: Meta's own guidance keeps the bottom 35% of the frame free of text, a line at y 1248, stricter than any interface here.

Organic Shorts keep the same rail, title bar and subscribe button; ads add the advertiser name and a call to action inside the bottom band. CapQA's Shorts preset uses the ad layout, since it costs nothing on the organic version and saves a re-export when the video is promoted.

Drop the file into the free check and pick Shorts Ads. It draws the rail, the subscribe button and the title bar over your own video, in your browser; nothing is uploaded. Then flip to the TikTok and Reels tabs.