YouTube Shorts Safe Zone: Where to Put Captions

Google publishes a safe-zone template for vertical video on YouTube: keep important elements 288 px from the top, 672 px from the bottom, 48 px from the left, and 192 px from the right of a 1080x1920 frame. That leaves an 840x960 box sitting above the middle of the screen. Captions inside it survive. Captions outside it are at risk.

Every number below comes from a page you can open. Where Google has not published one, this post says so.

What does the YouTube Shorts player actually cover?

The player draws its own furniture on top of your video, and Google documents the pieces in scattered places.

Google names the right-hand column the RHS panel in its Shorts ads documentation: "The RHS panel includes like, dislike, comment, and share buttons." (Google Ads Help)

The lower-right corner is spoken for too. YouTube's remix instructions tell viewers, "In the lower-right corner, tap Sound to find other Shorts that used the same audio and effect." (YouTube Help)

The bottom carries channel identity and text. For Shorts ads, Google notes they "use the advertiser's channel name and description" and that "Text that overflows beyond 1 line of text on mobile and 2 lines of text on desktop and TV will be truncated" (Google Ads Help).

Google does not publish an element-by-element pixel map of the organic Shorts player. It publishes something more useful: a margin.

What is the official safe zone for vertical YouTube video, in pixels?

Google Ads Help's page on square and vertical video carries a diagram it describes as a "Vertical video ad with pixel measurements around a red rectangle marked 'Safe Zone'. Resolution 1080x1920." Inside it, the red box is labeled "Safe Zone", the four margins read 288, 672, 192 and 48, and a note says "Dimensions in pixels". The instruction beside it: "Use this image as a reference to ensure important elements like your logo, product, supers, and others are within the red safe area to avoid risk of elements being covered within certain inventory." (Google Ads Help)

Edge	Margin on a 1080x1920 frame	Share of that dimension
Top	288 px	15%
Bottom	672 px	35%
Left	48 px	4.4%
Right	192 px	17.8%
Resulting safe box	840 x 960 px	about 39% of the frame area

Two caveats. First, this is an ads template, and ads carry furniture organic Shorts do not: Google's Shorts ads page describes a call-to-action button that "appears 3 seconds into the ad" for some campaign types (Google Ads Help). For an organic Short the template is conservative — which is what you want from a margin. Second, Google states plainly that "Overlays, call-to-actions, and buttons may appear in different places depending on the format, campaign type, and screen."

Where exactly should the caption band sit?

Four rules fall straight out of those four numbers.

The floor is 1,248 px from the top. 288 + 960 = 1,248, which is 65% of the way down the frame. The bottom of your lowest caption line goes above that, not below it. The broadcast habit of parking subtitles in the lower third is precisely wrong here — the bottom 35% is the single largest reserved strip in Google's own template.

Horizontally, stay between x = 48 and x = 888. The right margin is four times the left, because the action column lives there.

If you center text on the frame, cap the block at 696 px wide. A block centered on x = 540 reaches just 348 px each way before it crosses x = 888. That is about 64% of the frame width.

Eye level is above center. The safe box's own vertical midpoint is 768 px, or 40% down the frame. Text placed at the true center of the screen is already sitting low relative to the space you have.

One note that has nothing to do with pixels: measure the tallest wrap, not the first line. Word-timed captions that reveal one word at a time still occupy a text box, and a long sentence in a big font wraps to two or three lines that grow downward into the reserved zone.

Why is one set of numbers never enough?

The Shorts player is a moving target, and you can watch it move across Google's own pages.

On 25 June 2026 the YouTube Blog announced player changes: "We're introducing a new Clear Screen mode that temporarily hides all icons and text from your playback view", the heart icon replacing the thumbs-up, and — notably — "we're also retiring the dislike button". (YouTube Blog) The Google Ads page quoted above still lists dislike in the RHS panel. Two Google pages, two different players, because the rollout is in progress.

This is not new: in October 2024 YouTube wrote that "Recent updates to the player streamline its look, allowing creators' content to take center stage." (YouTube Blog)

The lesson is to design the margin, not the pixel. A caption that clears the reserved area by a comfortable gap survives the next redesign. A caption tuned to the exact edge of today's button does not.

Does the safe zone change on desktop and TV?

The surfaces differ, and YouTube's help splits by platform: separate Android, Computer and iPhone instructions, plus TV remote navigation where "To find more info about the Short, click right." (YouTube Help) The Shorts ads documentation adds that an ad's description truncates beyond one line on mobile and two lines on desktop and TV — the same asset, three different renderings.

No per-surface pixel map is published, so treat the phone feed as the tight case. Design for it and the roomier surfaces inherit the slack.

Will YouTube's own captions land on top of yours?

Possibly, and it is worth planning for. YouTube states: "If automatic captions are available, they'll automatically be published on the video." (YouTube Help) A viewer with captions turned on then gets a second text layer drawn by the player. Viewers can restyle it — the settings cover "Font, color, opacity, and size", "Background color and opacity", "Window color and opacity" and "Character edge style" (YouTube Help) — but placement is not among the options YouTube lists.

So keep your burned-in line in the upper half of the safe box, and review the automatic track in YouTube Studio, where you can "edit or remove any parts that haven't been properly transcribed" (YouTube Help).

What should you check before you publish?

1. Export 1080x1920 at 9:16 — see which aspect ratio to use if you are still deciding.
2. Add a guide layer: 48 px left, 192 px right, 288 px top, floor at 1,248 px.
3. Find your longest caption line and check the wrapped block, not the first word.
4. Centering on the frame? Cap the text block near 696 px wide.
5. Nothing load-bearing below 65% of the frame height — handles and logos included.
6. Watch one finished Short in the real feed on a phone before trusting any template.
7. If a line lands wrong, fix it and re-render before publishing, not after.

That last point is the whole game. On Everpop the captions are burned in word by word, and nothing goes out until you approve it, so the frame you sign off on is the frame the feed gets — and each clip comes with three free re-renders.

Safe-zone work is unglamorous and it compounds. A viewer who cannot read your hook because a share button is sitting on it does not report a bug. They just scroll.