RESEARCH / REVIEWED 13 OCTOBER 2026

What the guides
are based on.

We checked platform documentation and downloadable templates, then compared independent safe-zone tools. These are versioned reference guides. The platform interface layer is an approximate reconstruction, not a screenshot of your post or a promise about every device.

Official guides

All measurements below use a 1080 × 1920 canvas, with (0,0) at the top left. Margins are exclusions from the outside edge. Ad templates and organic UI are separate layers.

Instagram Reels

Meta’s Reels ad guide supplies 14% top, 35% bottom and 6% per side. The clear area is 950.4 × 979.2 px at this reference size. We preserve the percentages rather than replacing them with an arbitrary rounded rectangle. Meta’s downloadable checker link did not return a valid template file during our review, so the written guidance is the source.

These numbers describe ad clearance. The organic interface uses a separate estimate. The Reels/Friends header and navigation can vary by account, region and app version; Meta’s own interface announcement illustrates this evolution.

TikTok

TikTok’s In-Feed documentation links standard, anchor, LTR and RTL templates. We inspected the standard LTR PNG: its labelled 720 × 1280 dimensions scale by 1.5. The clear polygon is (120,240), (960,240), (960,840), (780,840), (780,1260), (120,1260). The upper area is 840 px wide, narrowing to 660 px beside the action rail. The displayed 660 × 1020 size is its conservative inner rectangle; the rendered and exported guide keeps the step.

The raw 2880 × 5120 image boundaries were also checked independently. Anchor templates reserve substantially more bottom space and have different caption-line variants. The standard guide does not cover those variants. Official standard LTR template ZIP.

YouTube Shorts

Google’s video ad specifications link a transparent vertical PNG. Its fully transparent opening measures from x48,y288 to x888,y1248, or 840 × 960 px. This is universal vertical ad guidance, not an official pixel map of organic Shorts.

The representative interface includes the channel, Subscribe button and right action rail. YouTube’s own editing guides identify interface and screen-edge risks without prescribing one universal organic rectangle. Use the native draft preview for the final check.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s video-sharing troubleshooting page publishes a 1080 × 1920 safe-zone diagram with top 260, bottom 560, left 112 and right 210 px. This leaves 758 × 1100 px. We use that official video guide, including when the organic option is selected.

LinkedIn’s fullscreen video documentation explains that device size and media aspect ratio can change cropping. The preview represents the vertical viewer, not the ordinary desktop feed. Its profile, caption and controls are illustrative.

X

X’s official vertical-video page shows an annotated phone: top 155 px, bottom 300 px, a 245 px metadata region and local 155/205 px control widths. The diagram does not identify an unambiguous source-canvas scale, so those local widths are not converted into whole-frame side margins. We retain a clearly marked editorial estimate: top 160, bottom 545, left/right 60 px, with a horizontal bottom action row.

Organic estimates and editable overlays

Default estimated margins, in top/bottom/left/right order: Reels 180/480/60/160; TikTok 180/480/60/180; Shorts 150/480/60/180; X 160/545/60/60. These are our conservative working buffers for the drawn interface, not platform-approved specifications or measured current-device screenshots. Four-line caption mode adds 96 px of bottom clearance to these estimates. Official guides stay fixed. User-adjusted margins become a custom rectangle and lose the sourced-guide label.

Interface layouts are generated as scalable vectors so names and captions can be edited. Both guide-only and visible-interface PNGs are generated at 1080 × 1920, with transparent video areas, from the same geometry. Expanded descriptions, comments, native subtitles, shopping anchors, stickers and accessibility text scaling are not simulated. No automated content-safety score is inferred.

Instagram profile grid: a separate cover crop

The profile-grid view models a 3:4 cover thumbnail. It is separate from the opened Reels player: there is no Reels action rail or post-caption block. Pause on a candidate cover frame; a separately uploaded Instagram cover can be different.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri’s taller-grid explanation describes the change and thumbnail customization, but gives no numerical grid ratio. Kapwing’s first-hand nine-image test reports 3:4 profile crops. We therefore label the preset an approximate model, not an official universal pixel specification.

For a 1080 × 1920 canvas, a centered 3:4 tile retains x0–1080 and y240–1680: 1080 × 1440 px, with 240 px (12.5%) excluded above and below. The vertical-position slider moves that crop from y0–1440 through y480–1920. A 4:5 feed crop is different and is not used here. The small Reel badge is illustrative. For non-9:16 footage, this models the selected Fit/Fill composition within a 9:16 source canvas, not Instagram’s direct crop of the original file. If a file falls back to Drive’s embedded player, its letterboxing can affect alignment.

Independent tools reviewed

• AdKit: source-labelled ad templates, opacity controls and PNG/SVG exports. Its Google dimensions agree with our independent PNG measurement. Its LinkedIn layout buffers should not supersede LinkedIn’s own diagram.
• AdCheckLab: distinguishes organic and advertising layouts and depicts TikTok’s stepped ad geometry. Organic numbers were not independently verified on devices.
• Anjin: useful local-processing approach and clear Meta ad scope.
• Slice Media: player UI and downloadable guides. Its simplified LinkedIn margins differ from the official diagram, so we did not adopt them.
• Safe Zone Templates: browser-local checker and transparent PNG export. We do not adopt its universal visibility guarantee; platform and device variability prevents that promise.

Public links and privacy

Dropbox documents raw=1 for rendering shared files. We preserve the share key and change only the rendering parameters. Public Google Drive files use a temporary, same-origin stream so the player and paused profile tile can use the same source. It requests only anonymous download access, keeps byte-range seeking, and does not store the video. Files that only allow embedded playback can fall back to Google’s player; those files need a local copy for the profile timeline. Google’s supported download API uses specific file links and permissions, not arbitrary HTML page URLs.

Local files use browser object URLs. There is no video upload endpoint, video database or browser storage. The Drive relay accepts validated file IDs, checks download destinations, file type and declared size, and streams without writing media to disk or cache. It does not forward your browser cookies or account credentials. Standard hosting request logs may still apply. The decimal 300 MB limit applies to selected local files and Drive streams. Other remote hosts may not expose their total size. Playback depends on browser codec support and host permissions. HTTPS watch pages are not automatically direct video sources.

Verification limits

Official guide geometry was checked against published values or source assets. Current iOS/Android interface screenshots across device sizes, app versions and regions have not been calibrated. Treat the interface as a planning aid, then inspect a draft in the actual platform before publishing.

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