Shorts safe zones & thumbnails

What the viewer actually sees.

On a Short, YouTube draws its buttons, your channel name and the title over the bottom and right of the picture, and on most phones it crops the sides as well. On a thumbnail, the duration badge sits on the bottom-right corner. See where, check your own frames and thumbnails against them, and download an overlay for your editor.

Shorts safe zones

Red is covered by the player’s buttons and text; grey is cut off on tall phones. Keep titles, captions and faces inside the green box: 756×1411 at 108,144 on a 1080×1920 frame.

Labels

Overlay for your editor (transparent PNG)

YouTube doesn’t publish where its Shorts controls sit. These zones were measured on 2026-10-13 in the YouTube Android app and on YouTube’s mobile player on four phone screens, and cover all of them, rounded outwards. The iPhone app wasn’t measured, and YouTube moves things from time to time.

Thumbnail check

Requirements from YouTube Help: Add video thumbnails. Custom thumbnails need a verified account; for Shorts they can only be set in YouTube Studio on a computer.

Cutting a Short from landscape footage

Source width

Source height

A 9:16 window is 608×1080, keeping 32% of the width. Filling 1080×1920 enlarges it 1.78×, so it will look softer than the source. Shoot wider or in 4K if you plan to cut Shorts from it.

Why the sides get cut off

A Short is 9:16, but most phones today are taller and narrower than that, around 19.5:9. YouTube fills the screen’s height, so the sides of the picture fall off the edges: up to about a tenth on each side in the mobile player, less in the app, which leaves out the status bar and navigation. On some screens and layouts it letterboxes instead, which keeps the sides but moves the buttons and title over the bottom of the picture. The zones here cover both.

How these zones were measured

YouTube doesn’t publish where its Shorts controls sit, and most “safe zone” templates don’t say where theirs came from. These were measured two ways: in the YouTube Android app, from screenshots over several different videos (the controls are what stays the same), and on YouTube’s mobile player on four phone screen sizes, by reading each control’s position relative to the video. Each zone is the area covered in any of them, rounded outwards. The app’s buttons start noticeably higher than the mobile player’s, about halfway down the frame. The iPhone app wasn’t measured.

Thumbnails: what YouTube asks for

YouTube’s current recommendation is 3840×2160 for videos (2160×3840 for Shorts), at least 640 pixels on the short side, 16:9 (or 9:16), as JPG or PNG. The file limit depends on where you upload it: 2 MB from the mobile app, 50 MB from YouTube Studio on a computer. Custom thumbnails need a verified account.