# Ad Safe Zone Checker > Upload your vertical ad creative and instantly see where TikTok, Instagram Stories & Reels, and YouTube Shorts UI will cover it — captions, CTA buttons, and the like/comment/share rail. Sourced overlay margins for every placement, a strictest combined view for cross-platform creative, and an annotated PNG export for your team. Runs entirely in your browser; your image is never uploaded. **Kind:** Free, in-browser mockup/asset generator from AdSights — no signup. **Capture:** Downloadable PNG via the in-tool Download button. **Category:** Design Tools **Subcategory:** Ad Creative QA Tool **Difficulty:** beginner **Estimated time:** 1-2 min **Last updated:** 2026-07-11T12:00:00+00:00 ## Overview Every vertical placement draws interface elements over your creative: TikTok stacks a caption, CTA button, and music ticker over roughly the bottom third and an engagement rail on the lower right edge; Meta covers the top 14% of Stories and Reels plus up to 35% of the bottom on Reels; YouTube Shorts reserves nearly a fifth of the width for its action rail. Headlines, price points, logos, and CTAs placed in those regions simply disappear when the ad runs. This checker makes the problem visible before trafficking: upload the creative, switch between placements (or the strictest combined view), and keep the elements that matter inside the dashed safe area. Margins come from each platform’s own spec or safe-zone template — sources are linked next to every figure — and the whole tool runs client-side, so unreleased campaign creative never leaves your machine. ## Also Try - [Guide: Meta Video Ad Specs (Reels, Stories, Feed)](/resources/guides/meta-ad-creative-video-specs-guide) — The full Meta placement spec sheet — dimensions, durations, file sizes, and codecs — for the creative you just safe-zone checked. - [Ad Mockup Generator](/resources/tools/generators/ad-mockup-generator) — Preview the same creative inside realistic Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Stories ad chrome for decks and client approvals. ## What This Tool Teaches Ad Safe Zones, Vertical Video Creative QA, Platform UI Overlays, TikTok Ad Specs, Meta Stories and Reels Specs, YouTube Shorts Specs ## What This Tool Assesses Ad Creative Safe-Zone Compliance, Vertical Placement Readiness ## Features - Sourced 2026 safe-zone overlays for TikTok In-Feed, Meta Stories, Meta Reels, and YouTube Shorts - Action-rail aware — side margins (like/comment/share rail) are overlaid and subtracted from the safe width, not just top/bottom chrome - "All platforms" strictest combined view for creative that has to run everywhere - Explicit aspect handling — non-9:16 uploads are letterboxed by default with a mismatch notice; center-crop simulation is an opt-in toggle - Pixel and percentage margins on the 1080×1920 reference canvas, with the platform source linked for every figure - Annotated PNG export of the preview for creative reviews and client feedback - Runs entirely client-side — the creative never leaves the browser - Guarded uploads: images only, 10 MB / 48-megapixel budget with clear error messages ## FAQs ### What is an ad safe zone? An ad safe zone is the region of a vertical (9:16) creative that platform UI never covers. On TikTok, Instagram Stories & Reels, and YouTube Shorts, the app draws its own interface over your ad — the caption, CTA button, music/audio row, and the like/comment/share action rail on the right edge. Any text, logo, product shot, or CTA you place under those elements is partially or fully hidden when the ad runs. The safe zone is what remains after subtracting those covered margins; this checker overlays them on your actual creative so you can verify placement before trafficking. ### What are the TikTok safe zone dimensions in 2026? TikTok’s official In-Feed safe-zone template (“Standard Version”, downloadable from the TikTok Ads Manager Help Center article for In-Feed ads; measured July 2026) is annotated on a 720×1280 base: keep the top 160 px and the bottom 440 px clear (feed chrome, caption, CTA button, and music ticker), leave 80 px on each side as device-crop margins, and avoid an additional 120×280 px like/comment/share rail block on the lower right. Scaled to a 1080×1920 export, that is 240 px top, 660 px bottom, 120 px per side, and a 180×420 px rail at x 780, y 840 — leaving a largest fully-safe rectangle of 660×1020 px. TikTok’s covered area grows with caption length and interactive add-ons, so treat these margins as a minimum and confirm the final creative in TikTok’s ad preview. ### What is the safe zone for Instagram and Facebook Reels ads? Meta’s published Reels guidance (Meta Business Help Center, “About text overlays and the Safe Zone for ads in Stories and Reels”) says to keep the top 14% (about 269 px on 1080×1920), the bottom 35% (about 672 px), and 6% on each side (about 65 px) free of text, logos, and key creative elements. The bottom overlay holds the caption, audio attribution, CTA, and engagement actions, which is why Reels’ bottom margin is much deeper than Stories’. That leaves roughly a 950×979 px safe area on a 1080×1920 canvas. ### What is the safe zone for Instagram and Facebook Stories ads? Meta’s published Stories guidance says to leave the top 14% (about 269 px on 1080×1920) and the bottom 20% (about 384 px) free of text and logos — the top holds profile info, the story timer, and the close control; the bottom holds the call-to-action and reply composer. Meta publishes no side margins for Stories, so the safe area spans the full 1080 px width and roughly 1267 px of height. ### What is the YouTube Shorts safe zone? Google publishes a vertical safe-zone overlay template for ads (linked from “About video ad specs” in Google Ads Help). Measured directly from that official overlay, the safe area on a 1080×1920 canvas is 840×960 px, starting 48 px from the left and 288 px from the top — i.e. margins of 288 px top (search and camera controls), 672 px bottom (title, channel, audio, and Shorts UI), 48 px left, and 192 px right (the like/comment/share/remix rail). Note the right rail alone removes almost 18% of the width, which is why centering text horizontally is not enough on Shorts. ### How do I design one creative that is safe on every platform? Use the strictest margin on each side across all placements — that is exactly what this tool’s “All platforms” view shows. Combining TikTok, Meta Stories, Meta Reels, and YouTube Shorts gives: top 15% (288 px, set by YouTube Shorts), bottom 35% (672 px, set by Reels and Shorts), left 11.1% (120 px, set by TikTok’s device-crop margin), and right 27.8% (300 px, wide enough to clear both TikTok’s engagement rail and the Shorts action rail) on a 1080×1920 canvas. That leaves a universal safe rectangle of roughly 660×960 px in the upper-center-left of the frame. Keep headlines, logos, product shots, and CTAs inside that box and the same creative can run on all four placements without anything being covered. ### What happens if my creative isn’t 9:16? The checker never crops your creative silently. A non-9:16 upload (16:9, 4:5, 1:1, …) is letterboxed by default — the whole image stays visible inside the 9:16 frame, with an explicit notice showing your creative’s actual dimensions and aspect ratio. If you want to see how a platform would center-crop it to full screen, switch to the clearly-labeled Fill mode, where the shaded overflow is what gets cut off. For vertical placements you should still export at 1080×1920 (9:16) whenever possible: letterboxed creative wastes screen area and typically underperforms full-frame vertical. ### Is my image uploaded to a server? No — the creative itself never leaves your browser. The image is read locally with the FileReader API, rendered in the preview, and discarded when you leave the page; the picture, its content, and its filename are never transmitted, stored, or logged, which makes the tool safe for unreleased campaign creative. Like the rest of this site, the tool does record anonymous first-party usage analytics — for example that an upload happened, plus the file format, byte size, and pixel dimensions — subject to your region’s consent settings; that metadata never includes the image. Uploads are also validated client-side (PNG, JPG, or WebP, up to 10 MB and 48 megapixels, checked from the file header before anything is decoded), so an oversized file fails with a clear message instead of freezing the tab. ### Where do the safe-zone numbers come from? Every margin in this tool is sourced, and the source is linked next to each placement. Meta Stories and Reels figures are the percentages Meta publishes in its Business Help Center safe-zone article. TikTok and YouTube Shorts figures were measured directly from each platform’s own published template file: TikTok’s “In-Feed — Standard Version” safe-zone template (annotated on a 720×1280 base, including its 120×280 px engagement-rail block) and Google’s vertical safe-zone overlay PNG (an 840×960 px transparent safe rectangle at x 48, y 288) — both downloaded and measured in July 2026. TikTok’s figures are labeled as template minimums because its covered area varies with caption length and add-ons. Platform UI changes over time, so always validate the final creative in each platform’s own preview tool before launch. ## Related Tools - [Ad Mockup Generator](/resources/tools/generators/ad-mockup-generator) - [Subtitle Overlay Mockup Generator](/resources/tools/generators/subtitle-overlay-generator) - [Creative Quality Grader](/resources/tools/analyzers/creative-quality-grader) - [Social Media Post Mockup Generator](/resources/tools/generators/social-media-post-mockup-generator) --- [View the live Ad Safe Zone Checker tool →](/resources/tools/generators/ad-safe-zone-checker)