TikTok, Reels and Shorts safe zone in Premiere Pro.

When someone watches your video in TikTok, Instagram or YouTube, the app draws its interface on top: buttons on the right (like, comments, share), the account name, caption and sound bar at the bottom, a search bar or tabs at the top.

Anything you place in those areas is partly hidden. A caption that sits too low disappears behind the description. The safe zone is the part of the frame the interface leaves free: that's where your captions and text live.

Plenty of editors import a template PNG on a track above, then remove it before exporting. It works, but you have to find it, resize it to 1080 × 1920, and never forget it at export. The numbers on templates vary from site to site, and nobody says how old they are.

Platforms change their interface without warning. The values in the table above are cautious reference points, cross-checked from public templates: none of them are official. The test that counts is still an export sent privately to your own phone.

Premiere has safe margins (title and action), in the Program Monitor menu. They come from TV and leave an even border around the picture. They ignore the heavier bottom and the right-hand buttons of short-video apps.

To check a vertical video, you need a pixel reference for each platform, on a 9:16 sequence. That's what the table gives you, and what Rushly shows for you.

A sponsored video also shows a call-to-action button, labels, and sometimes a longer caption. So the margins are wider. Rushly uses the overlap of the ad templates from TikTok, Meta (Reels) and vertical Google Ads: about 288 px at the top, 672 px at the bottom, 120 px on the left and 192 px on the right.

If your video is used both organically and as an ad, edit it with this wider margin: it will work everywhere.

The “Safe zone” bar is pinned at the bottom of the Rushly panel, visible from every tab. Pick Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Universal or Ads: Rushly places a preview of the platform's interface in the Program Monitor, on a locked track. You see your frame with the real buttons on top.

It needs a 9:16 sequence and tells you so otherwise. The preview is removed automatically when you close the panel, so it doesn't go out with your export.

In Captions, the Platform setting (TikTok, Reels, Shorts) places your captions inside the safe zone. A 9:16 mini-map lets you drag them, and “Put back in the safe zone” puts them back. Captions that are too wide are shrunk rather than cut off.

A limit worth knowing: Captions and the Safe zone bar don't use exactly the same margins, and Captions is a little more cautious. Trust the bar's preview for the visual check.