Shorts safe-zone overlay pack

Drop one of these over your timeline as a guide layer and stop guessing where YouTube's interface is going to land on your Short.

How to use them

Import the PNG into your editor the same way you'd import any still image.
Put it on a video track above your footage, stretched across the whole timeline.
Frame your shot and place your captions using it as the guide.
Turn the layer off before you export. It has no idea it isn't supposed to be in the finished Short.

Works anywhere you can stack an image over video: Resolve, Premiere, Final Cut, CapCut, Shotcut. There's nothing app-specific about the files, they're just transparent PNGs at the right size. Resolve's own safe-area guides are broadcast title-safe, which is a different thing and won't show you any of this.

The files

16:9 crop guide

For editing the long video. Shows the centre column that survives the vertical crop, and what the Shorts UI covers inside it.

PNG · 1920×1080

Shaded overlay

For a 9:16 timeline. Filled zones, loud and obvious while you frame the shot.

PNG · 1080×1920

Outline overlay

For a 9:16 timeline. Dashed edges only, quieter for leaving on while you work.

PNG · 1080×1920

Editable source

All three overlays as SVG, if you want to restyle them.

SVG 16:9 SVG shaded SVG outline

Raw measurements

Plain text, if you'd rather build your own guide.

TXT

A 1920x1080 crop guide: the outer thirds marked cropped away, the surviving centre 608-pixel column outlined, and YouTube's Shorts interface zones marked inside it.

YouTube Shorts safe zone overlay showing the action button rail on the right, the title and handle row across the bottom, the progress bar, the search and camera icons top-right, and the green safe area in the centre.

The measurements

For a 1080×1920 frame, these are the regions YouTube's own interface covers on a phone.

Region	Position	Size
Action buttons	x 907, y 806	162 × 960
Title + handle	x 32, y 1517	853 × 288
Progress bar	x 0, y 1891	1080 × 29
Search / camera	x 734, y 29	324 × 106
Safe area	x 0, y 135	907 × 1382

Three things worth knowing

Phone is the strict case. On desktop youtube.com the action buttons sit beside the player rather than on it, and the mobile search and camera icons don't exist at all. If the framing reads on a phone, it reads everywhere.

A 9:16 centre crop of a 16:9 1080p frame keeps only the middle 607-pixel column. Half the damage happens before the safe zones apply at all, which is why the simulator draws crop guides for non-vertical sources.

These positions track YouTube's current mobile layout and shift with app releases. If something looks off, check it against the live simulator, which is generated from the same numbers as these overlays.

Checking the framing is ten seconds. Cutting the Short is the hour.

YouPush finds the moments in your long video, cuts them vertical, captions them, brands them, and schedules the week. Desktop app, one-time purchase, your footage never leaves your machine.

See how YouPush works →