Stories viewer · sticker & reply overlay
Instagram Story safe zone checker
This Instagram Story safe zone checker draws the organic Stories viewer on a 1080×1920 canvas: progress segments, the avatar row, Close, the Send message field, and typical sticker wells. Reels and Stories share a canvas and almost none of the chrome. Pan, crop, or pad in the browser — a private video editor, no upload required.
Written by the FramePad editorial desk · Last reviewed 28 August 2026 · Independent overlay measurements on iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro Max, and Galaxy S24 Ultra. See the about page for method.
Live preview
Waiting for media
Drop a 16:9 clip
MP4, MOV, WebM, JPG, PNG, or WebP. Processing stays in this tab.
Specification
Pixel math on 1080×1920
Pixel values assume a 1080×1920 design canvas — the interchange size for TikTok, Reels, Shorts, and Stories. Millimetres are physical equivalents at 460 ppi (iPhone 15/16 Pro Max class) and 505 ppi (Galaxy S24 Ultra class) if that canvas is shown fullscreen.
| Region | Pixels | Percent | mm @ 460 ppi | mm @ 505 ppi |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Native canvas Stories, Highlights, and Story ads all consume 1080×1920. Non-9:16 is cropped. | 1080 × 1920 px | 100.0% × 100.0% | 59.6 mm × 106.0 mm | 54.3 mm × 96.6 mm |
Progress + avatar + Close Segments, username, timestamp, pause, more, and Close occupy the top ~14%. | 1080 × 269 px | 100.0% × 14.0% | 59.6 mm × 14.9 mm | 54.3 mm × 13.5 mm |
Typical sticker well Polls, sliders, and link chips land in the center third. They are extra hold-outs. | 778 × 422 px | 72.0% × 22.0% | 43.0 mm × 23.3 mm | 39.1 mm × 21.2 mm |
Send message + like + send Full-width reply pill with heart and paper plane. No tab bar underneath. | 1080 × 154 px | 100.0% × 8.0% | 59.6 mm × 8.5 mm | 54.3 mm × 7.7 mm |
Lower chrome including home indicator Reply field plus iOS home indicator. Keep burn-in above y = 84%. | 1080 × 307 px | 100.0% × 16.0% | 59.6 mm × 17.0 mm | 54.3 mm × 15.4 mm |
Recommended safe rectangle Center 92% × 70%. Place faces, product, and burned-in type here. | 994 × 1344 px | 92.0% × 70.0% | 54.9 mm × 74.2 mm | 50.0 mm × 67.6 mm |
Text overlap estimator
Approximate how many caption lines collide with Instagram Stories chrome at a given type size.
- Lines
- 2
- Block height
- 105 px
- Caption well
- 169 px
- Platform cap
- 80 ch
Fits the caption well. Verify with the overlay — platform fonts still wrap on word boundaries.
Aspect ratio calculator
Convert any source into a 1080 × 1920 master. Crop uses cover; pad uses contain.
- Simplified ratio: 16:9 (1.7778) — wider than 9:16
- Cover crop window: 608 × 1080 px from the source
- Contain pad result: 1080 × 608 px inside 1080 × 1920
Where to place text on Instagram Stories so it isn't blocked
The Stories player is a tap-right sequence, not a swipe-up feed. Instagram composites a progress row, a profile lockup, Close, and a full-width reply field on top of your 1080×1920 file. There is no engagement rail. That is the first correction people miss when they reuse a Reel master: they leave a 13% right gutter for a like stack that does not exist, then park a headline under the progress bars that absolutely does.
Typography in Stories is not a caption. Instagram’s native text tool is a display face with a heavy outline, dropped wherever the creator taps. Burned-in type from a desktop editor competes with that tool and with every sticker. If you burn type, put it in the title-safe center — roughly y = 18% to y = 78% — and keep it off the places Instagram will later offer a poll, a slider, or a link chip. The Send message field is a pill that sits just above the home indicator. A lower-third that worked on TikTok will sit inside that pill and vanish.
On notched iPhones the status bar plus progress segments occupy close to 14% of height before the username even draws. A logo in the upper-left — a habit from landscape YouTube end cards — is gone. Offset brand marks below y = 16% and in from x = 8% so the avatar row cannot cover them. Preview at 1080×1920, not at the size of your monitor. CTR on Stories is a tap, not a swipe. If the first readable frame is a cropped ear or a headline under the progress row, the tap-right happens before the hold. Hold the first clean frame 0.4 seconds. Measure type with the overlap estimator at 42 px on a 1080-wide master; if a six-word hook wraps onto the reply field, shorten it.
Progress bars, the reply field, and sticker collision
Progress segments are thin rounded bars at approximately y = 4.5%. One bar per card in the ring. They are not decorative. A headline that starts at y = 3% is clipped on every current iPhone. Treat the entire top 14% as occupied even if a given story has only one segment. The profile row is avatar, username, timestamp, pause, more, and Close. The avatar sits around (7%, 8%) with a gradient ring. Close sits in the top-right. Do not put a product SKU or a legal line in either corner.
The reply field is the Stories equivalent of a caption well, except the viewer types into it. It is a rounded pill spanning most of the width at roughly y = 88%, with a heart and a paper plane to its right. Burned-in “comment below” or “link in bio” instructions that sit here are unreadable. Raise them into the center third. The heart is a like target; the plane is send. Both are hit targets of about 48 CSS pixels. There is no tab bar under this row — that is the visual difference from Reels. You gain vertical room at the bottom of the picture and lose it at the top to progress segments.
Stickers are the third collision. Instagram does not reserve a rail for them — you place them. Typical auto-suggestions land a poll or question in the middle third. FramePad draws sample wells so you can see a product shot under a poll before you add one on device. Toggle the sticker layer off to judge the picture, on to judge the collision. Link chips are especially wide. If you use one, leave a 120-pixel-tall band clear of burned-in type wherever you intend to drop it. This overlay is percentage-based on 1080×1920. Device points lie. Instagram composites in design pixels and scales. Always preview here.
Stories versus Reels versus Story ads
Organic Stories, Reels, and Story ads share a canvas and three different chromes. Reels have a tab bar, Remix, Send, and a three-line caption. Organic Stories have progress, reply, and stickers. Story ads — the Advantage+ placement — have a 14% top hold-out, a 20% bottom hold-out, and a full-width CTA. A file that is safe as an organic Story can still fail as a Story ad because the CTA is taller than the reply field. Confirm paid placements on the Meta ad safe zone previewer.
If the same asset ships as a Reel, flip to the Instagram Reels safe zone tool without moving the picture. The Reels caption well is taller than the Stories reply field and the right 13% is now a rail. Paid and organic do not share chrome even when they share a canvas. Cross-posting a Reel into the Stories tray is not a Stories master. Instagram letterboxes or center-crops depending on the client version. Build a dedicated 9:16 Stories cut in FramePad.
Tap-right sequences punish slow hooks more than swipe-up feeds. There is no audio-led hold; many Stories are watched muted with a thumb ready. Put the product in the first frame, inside the safe rectangle, with type that does not depend on sound. Fifteen seconds is the still duration. Video can run to 60 seconds, but completion on Stories falls fast after seven. Cut to the still duration unless the extra time is a demonstration the poll is asking about. On iPhone 15/16 Pro Max and Galaxy S24 Ultra the overlay percentages in this tool still match the live chrome. When Instagram ships a new reply treatment, the overlay file is what we revise — see the log on the contact page.
From 16:9 landscape to a Stories master
Most cameras still deliver 16:9. Stories will accept that file and crop the sides. Faces near the left or right edge disappear. Use manual crop when the subject is a person you can pan onto. Use smart blur pad when the subject is a wide demonstration — a bench, a board, a table — and cutting the sides destroys the point. Run that treatment in the vertical video padding tool if you already know crop would wreck the scene, then return here to check chrome. Brand-color pad is a poster; it reads as a graphic, which Stories do not punish, but it changes the Highlight cover.
Highlight covers are cropped to a circle from the center of the first frame. A subject that is safe in the Stories rectangle can still be missing from the cover if it sits high or low. After you lock the Stories pan, check that a circular crop at the center still contains the face or the product. End cards that live in the bottom 16% are invisible under the reply field; move them into the center 70% of height and hold them for at least 1.8 seconds so a tap-right thumb can still read them.
Export a clean PNG or WebM for publish and a proof sheet with the overlay burned in for whoever signs off sticker placement. Auto-crop here means cover-scale into 1080×1920 plus a pan. H.264 via FFmpeg.wasm is attempted when SharedArrayBuffer is available; otherwise the canvas recorder writes WebM. Either path is a private video editor — no upload required, no watermark, no sign up. Close the tab and the object URLs are gone.
Method
01
Open the Stories tool
This page loads FramePad with the Instagram Stories overlay selected.
02
Drop a still or a 9:16 clip
Stories stills, video cards, and 16:9 masters all work. Processing is local.
03
Inspect chrome and stickers
Toggle progress/profile, the poll/link wells, and the reply field independently.
04
Reframe
Crop onto the face, or blur-pad a wide shot so the sides survive.
05
Export a proof
Send the burn-in PNG to whoever signs off sticker placement, then export a clean master for Instagram.