TikTok safe zone checker

How to stop a TikTok caption from covering text on screen

The For You player is a 9:16 stage with a persistent interface. At 1080×1920 the top 192 pixels hold Live, Following, For You, and search. The right 151 pixels hold the creator avatar, like, comment, bookmark, share, and the spinning sound disc. The bottom 163 pixels are the tab bar. Between the rail and the tab bar sits the caption stack: username, two wrapping lines, and the music ticker. If your burn-in sits in any of those rectangles, TikTok will not move its chrome — your type simply disappears under a translucent button.

Typography on TikTok is a system font at approximately 14–16 CSS pixels for captions and a heavier weight for the username. Tracking is tight. The caption container is left-aligned, roughly 68% of the frame wide, and vertically parked just above the music ticker. When a caption exceeds two lines the client appends an ellipsis and a “more” control. That control is itself a hit target. Designers who treat the caption as a poster paragraph will watch the last clause vanish on iPhone 15 and 16 Pro Max, where the home indicator plus tab bar steal even more vertical room than Android.

The CTR implication is mechanical. A viewer who cannot read the hook in the first 1.5 seconds swipes. If your hook is a lower-third that sits on top of the username, or a face that is bisected by the like button, the impression is wasted. This TikTok UI overlay preview is drawn in SVG at the same percentages the client uses, so a collision on this page is a collision on device.

TikTok caption safe area and the sound disc

The sound disc is a circular control in the lower-right, visually attached to the action rail. It rotates whenever licensed or original audio is present, which is nearly always. Editors often park a logo or a “follow” bug in that corner because it feels unused in a desktop preview. On device the disc covers it completely. Treat a 120-pixel circle at approximately 93%, 86% as permanently occupied.

Captions are not burned into the file; they are a separate text layer the client composites. You can still collide with them. A burned-in subtitle track that occupies the same coordinates as the native caption will double-stack and become unreadable. Prefer burned-in titles in the title-safe center, and native captions for accessibility and search. If you must burn subtitles, keep them above y = 71% and left of x = 82%.

Music tickers marquee. A static “Original sound” label is a lie the moment the string is longer than the well. Do not place arrows or product callouts along that marquee path. The ticker is a 52% × 2.2% strip at y ≈ 81%. Use the text overlap estimator on this page to preview line count at a given type size before you lock the caption.

How safe-zone mistakes tax CTR

We tested the same 12-second 16:9 talking-head cut on iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro Max, and Galaxy S24 Ultra, once center-cropped and once pan-adjusted in FramePad. The center crop put the speaker’s mouth under the like column on every device. Thumb-stop rate on the pan-adjusted version was materially higher in side-by-side creative tests because the face remained inside the safe rectangle for the entire hold. This is not mysterious: the For You feed is a face detector with a swipe gesture.

End cards are the second tax. A “Shop the link” card that lives in the bottom 20% is invisible under the tab bar. Move end cards into the center 70% of height and keep a 14% right gutter. If you need a QR or URL, put it in the title-safe box and hold it for at least 1.8 seconds — shorter and the overlay read never completes.

Hook text at the top of the frame is a third tax. The Following / For You tabs sit over the upper 10%. A headline that starts at y = 4% will be clipped on notched iPhones. Start display type below y = 12% even if it feels low in a desktop editor. If the same master also ships as a Reel, flip to the Instagram Reels safe zone tool without re-importing — Reels uses a taller caption well and a different rail.

From 16:9 landscape to a TikTok master

Most cameras still deliver 16:9. The conversion is not a scale — it is a choice between three masters. Manual crop covers the 9:16 frame and discards the sides; use it when the subject is already centered or when you can pan shot-by-shot. Smart blur pad fits the entire 16:9 image and fills the leftover vertical bands with a blurred, slightly darkened copy of the same frame; use it for interviews where cutting the desk or the lights looks worse than a pad. Run that treatment in the vertical video padding tool if you already know crop would destroy the scene. Solid brand padding is the same geometry with a flat color; use it when the brand color is part of the identity and you want a poster, not a simulation of more picture.

FramePad runs all three modes on a 1080×1920 canvas. Drag to pan, scroll to zoom, and toggle individual TikTok layers when you need to see the picture underneath. Export a clean PNG or a proof sheet with the overlay burned in so a reviewer who will never open this editor can still see the collision. Video trims record from the live canvas. H.264 via FFmpeg.wasm is attempted when the browser can load the core; otherwise the canvas recorder writes WebM. Either way, the file never crosses a network boundary — a private video editor with no upload required.