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A safe zone is the area of your video or image that will remain fully visible to viewers without being covered by the platform's native UI elements — such as like buttons, comment icons, profile names, captions, or navigation bars. Each platform has different safe zone dimensions depending on its interface design.
Keeping your key visual content, text overlays, logos, and calls-to-action inside the safe zone ensures they are never accidentally hidden by the app's own interface. This is especially critical for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, where action buttons occupy significant portions of the right side and bottom of the screen.
TikTok's danger zones are approximately 12% from the top, 22% from the bottom, 8% from the left, and 16% from the right of a 9:16 vertical video. The right side is the most critical area, as TikTok places its action buttons (like, comment, share, follow) in a vertical stack along the right edge.
The bottom of the screen is taken up by the username, audio track name, and video caption. Always keep your most important content — especially any text or CTA — in the central safe zone of the frame.
Instagram Reels and Stories both use the 9:16 vertical format, but their danger zones differ slightly. Reels have a larger bottom danger zone (about 20%) because of the audio track, description, and share bar that appear at the bottom. The right edge (about 11%) is also occupied by action icons.
Instagram Stories, on the other hand, have a more symmetrical layout. The top (about 13%) is occupied by the profile bar and Stories navigation, while the bottom (also about 13%) contains the reply input field. The left and right margins are much smaller, around 5% each, making Stories slightly more forgiving for full-bleed designs.
YouTube Shorts has one of the most aggressive safe zone requirements among vertical video platforms. Both the top and bottom danger zones are approximately 20% each, making the usable vertical space significantly smaller than other platforms. The Shorts UI includes a large subscribe button, channel name, title, and action bar that eat into the frame.
The right side also has an action column (about 11%) with like, dislike, comment, and share buttons. When creating Shorts content, always design with a tighter central safe zone in mind compared to TikTok or Reels.
TV Broadcast safe zones are a legacy standard from the CRT television era, now maintained in professional video production workflows including Adobe Premiere Pro and Avid. There are two concentric zones: Action Safe (5% margin from all edges) and Title Safe (10% margin from all edges).
Action Safe defines the area where all important visual action should remain. Title Safe is the more conservative inner zone where all text, logos, and lower thirds should be placed to guarantee legibility on any display. checksafe.zone renders both zones as overlapping outlines with labels, following the Premiere Pro convention.
No. checksafe.zone processes everything entirely inside your browser using native Web APIs. Your video or image file is never uploaded to any server — it never leaves your device. This means the tool works fully offline once the page has loaded, and there are zero privacy concerns about your creative assets.
This is especially important for agencies and studios working with confidential or unreleased client content. You can safely check safe zones for any project without worrying about data leaks or upload limits.
checksafe.zone supports any video or image format that your browser can natively decode. For video this includes MP4 (H.264, H.265), MOV, and WebM. For images this includes JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, and AVIF. HEVC support depends on your browser and operating system.
The tool automatically detects the aspect ratio of your file — 9:16, 16:9, 1:1, or 4:5 — and instantly shows the relevant platform options in the sidebar. If your file has a non-standard ratio it falls back to a generic 10% margin overlay.