TikTok and Reels safe zone checker for vertical video

The overlays you are designing around

Every vertical video plays underneath a stack of interface elements. Down the right edge sits the action rail: like, comment, share, and the creator avatar. Across the lower third sits the caption, the audio attribution, and the account name. Along the very bottom runs the navigation bar, and the top of the screen holds the feed tabs and search. TikTok and Instagram Reels arrange these pieces slightly differently, with Reels pushing its caption block a little lower and TikTok reserving more height for sounds, which is why this checker lets you flip between both platforms on the same frame.

Why your export looks fine until you post it

CapCut, Premiere, and every other editing app show you the full 9:16 canvas with nothing on top of it, so a subtitle parked near the bottom edge looks perfectly placed right up until publish. The app then draws its interface over your finished video, and that subtitle disappears behind the caption block or the nav bar. The mismatch only becomes visible after the video is live, when re-editing means re-uploading. Checking a frame against the overlays first catches the problem while it is still cheap to fix.

Compose for the middle of the frame

The reliable habit is to treat the central band of the frame as your stage: keep faces, product shots, and burned-in text away from the right rail and the bottom quarter, and let background visuals run to the edges. One caveat worth knowing: these overlays are close approximations, since both apps nudge their interfaces between versions and phone sizes. Centered composition gives you margin for that drift. Once a frame passes the check, queue the video with a TikTok scheduler and publish the same file to Reels without reframing it.