Drop in a frame from your Short and this tool overlays the exact areas YouTube’s Shorts interface sits on top of — the top status bar, the right-hand action rail, the title and channel block at the bottom, and the subscribe chrome and home indicator along the very bottom edge. You see at a glance whether your hook, your face, or your on-screen text is about to disappear behind a Like button or a channel name. Everything happens in your browser: your image is never uploaded, stored, or sent anywhere.
The canvas matches a real Short — 1080 × 1920 px, 9:16 — read straight from the same verified dataset behind our YouTube Shorts size guide, so the frame here and the spec sheet it links to can never drift apart. The overlays are positioned from documented Shorts UI measurements, not guesswork, but they remain a guide rather than a pixel-exact spec — YouTube adjusts its layout between app versions, devices, and screen sizes.
Drag and drop a frame from your clip here, or
JPEG, PNG, or WebP, up to 20 MB. Processed in your browser — never uploaded.
Your frame will appear here with the safe-zone overlays.
What the interface covers
These are the share of the total frame each interface zone occupies — pure geometry. The tool can’t see your image, so it makes no claim about whether your subject is covered; judge that against the overlay above.
UI element positions are approximate and vary by app version, device, and screen size — treat the overlays as a guide, not a pixel-exact spec. As of June 2026.
Your image is processed entirely in your browser with the Canvas API — it never leaves your device, and nothing is uploaded or stored.
Guide
A Short plays full-screen, but YouTube lays its own controls on top of your footage — and those controls don’t move out of the way for your content. The top of the frame carries the Shorts label, search, cast and more icons, plus the device status bar. The right edge holds the vertical action rail: like, dislike, comment, share, remix, and the rotating audio or channel disc, stacked down the lower half of the screen. The bottom strip packs your channel avatar, name, Subscribe button, video title, hashtags, and description into roughly the lower fifth of the frame — and it can expand upward when a viewer taps to read more. Below that, a thin band of sponsor and subscribe chrome and the device home indicator line the very bottom edge.
Anything you place under those areas is still in the video file, but viewers won’t reliably see it. The most common mistake is burning a title or call-to-action into the bottom of the frame, right where YouTube’s own title block lands. Overlay your frame here and any collision is obvious before you publish instead of after.
The reliable real estate on a Short is the centre of the frame, biased slightly upward. Keep faces, products, and any text you need read inside that band, clear of the right rail and the bottom third. If your hook is text, it performs best in the upper-middle — high enough to clear the title and channel block, low enough to clear the top bar and status icons.
The right action rail occupies roughly the right sixth of the frame through the lower half, so text or graphics that extend to the right edge will compete with engagement buttons. The bottom meta block can expand when a viewer opens the description, reaching further up the frame than the collapsed position shown — if you are burning in hashtags or a CTA, aim for the upper half of the frame rather than the lower third. Treat the right sixth and the bottom quarter as borrowed space: fine for atmosphere, risky for anything a viewer has to actually see.
Every percentage on this page is the area of one Shorts interface zone over the whole 9:16 frame — geometry, not image analysis. The tool has no idea whether the Subscribe button below your channel name is overlapping your face or whether the remix icon on the rail is sitting over blank space; it only knows where YouTube draws those controls. We would rather hand you an accurate interface map than a fabricated "subject blocked" score a browser tool can’t legitimately calculate.
Two Shorts-specific things the static numbers under-state: the description/title block expands when a viewer taps it, eating further up the frame, and the bottom subscribe chrome plus the home indicator claim the very last strip below it. Toggle each zone in the legend while you place your content, read the per-zone notes for what expands, and treat the documented Shorts measurements as a strong guide that YouTube still shifts between app versions and devices — leave margin at every edge.
No. Your Short’s frame is read straight into the browser, drawn with the overlays on an in-page canvas, and any annotated copy you save downloads back to your device — no server ever sees it. Nothing is uploaded, stored, or logged, and since the work is all client-side it runs the same with no connection at all.
They are the areas of a Short where YouTube’s own interface sits on top of your footage: the top status bar and icons, the right-hand action rail (like, dislike, comment, share, remix, audio disc), the bottom title, channel, and description block, and the subscribe chrome and home indicator at the very bottom edge. Keep anything important — your face, your hook, on-screen text — out of those areas and toward the centre of the frame.
No. It maps the top bar, action rail, title/description block, and subscribe chrome and reports the share of the frame each takes — that is all it measures. Whether your hook clears the rail or your text survives an expanded description is something you judge by eye with the overlay on; we do not invent a "subject blocked" statistic a browser tool cannot actually measure.
They are transcribed from documented Shorts UI measurements, so they are accurate enough to plan around — but they are a guide, not a pixel-perfect spec. YouTube shifts its layout between app versions, devices, and screen sizes, so leave a little margin rather than placing content right at a zone edge.
Overlay Instagram’s Reels UI — the top bar, right action rail, caption block, and nav — on your own clip to see what gets covered. Runs in your browser.
Instagram Stories safe zone checkerOverlay Instagram’s Story UI — the progress bars, profile row, reply bar, and side tap-advance margins — on your own frame to see what gets covered. Runs in your browser.
TikTok safe zone checkerOverlay TikTok’s For You feed UI — the top tabs, right action rail, caption block, and nav bar — on your own clip to see what gets covered. Runs in your browser.
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Free to use — paste this snippet into any page. It stays up to date automatically and links back to SocialKit.
<iframe src="https://socialk.it/embed/youtube-shorts-safe-zone-checker" width="100%" height="920" style="border:1px solid #e5e7eb;border-radius:12px;max-width:680px" loading="lazy" title="YouTube Shorts safe zone checker by SocialKit"></iframe>SocialKit publishes scheduled Reels natively to Instagram — check your framing here, then let the calendar publish it at the right time across all 11 platforms.
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