Keeping Reels and Shorts captions clear of the app's buttons
By Captionwale · 31 October 2026
Reels and Shorts lay buttons and text over the lower and right edges of each video. Learn where that overlay sits and how to keep your captions out of it.
Space the app takes back
Post a vertical video to Reels on Instagram or to Shorts on YouTube and the app paints its own layer over it. A header runs across the top. Buttons stack up on the right. The handle and the post's text sit along the bottom. The editor shows you none of this, and all of it appears once the video is live.
Captions get hit hardest. Television and cinema subtitles sit low in the picture, so most of us drop captions near the bottom without thinking. On a phone, that spot is where the username and the start of the description sit, which is exactly where the viewer looks to read.
The overlay, edge by edge
Instagram and YouTube place their controls in similar spots, so a single plan works for both. Neither company publishes measurements, and each one moves things about between app versions. Every figure below is a rough guide, not a spec.
- Bottom edge: the handle and post text, often with a sound label or a button as well. This is the tallest strip of the overlay and the one that hides captions most often.
- Right edge: a column with the buttons for likes, comments, sharing and audio. Any caption stretching edge to edge has its last words hidden behind it.
- Top edge: the phone's status bar, with the app's header controls below it.
- Left edge: nothing is drawn here. Even so, words jammed against the side of a phone look cramped, and on a curved screen they can get clipped.
The safe area in Captionwale
Look above the preview, beside the aspect choices, for a button marked with a dotted square. It switches on the safe-area guide. On a 9:16 frame the guide greys out 12% of the height at the top and 20% at the bottom, plus 5% of the width on the left and 14% on the right. The figures were worked out by watching the overlays on Reels, Shorts and TikTok, taking in all three, and then padding a little more on purpose. Keep a caption inside the box and it stays visible on every one of them, instead of suiting one app perfectly and colliding with the next.
All the guide does is draw a boundary. It shows up while you preview; exports never include it. If a caption strays across it, the guide leaves it there. Some templates even begin inside the grey band, so choose the design first, turn the guide on, and then drag the caption higher if it needs to go.
Why percentages and not pixels? The preview's size depends on your screen, and the export's size depends on the resolution you pick. A share of the frame is the one measure that holds steady across both.
Other shapes need thinner strips. For a square video the guide shades the top by 8%, the right side by 8% and the foot by 14%. Landscape video gets the long-standing title-safe area: 5% in from each edge. That also keeps text clear of the timestamp and controls a player puts along its bottom.
Habits for good placement
The box is a fence to stay inside, not a target to hit. Within it, these habits make a caption easy to read once it is live:
- Keep the caption centred, low-middle in the frame, resting just above the bottom strip rather than in it.
- Prefer short lines. A full-width caption slides under the column of buttons, while two short lines fit where one long one doesn't. How many words to show at once covers this properly.
- See where the faces are first. Words laid across someone's mouth are tough to read, and they cover the expression that carries the line.
- Plan for long descriptions. Every added line of post text pushes the app's bottom strip further up the frame.
- On busy footage, choose a style that puts a stroke around the letters or a solid box under them. The caption styles page shows each one.
When the margins may not hold
Treat the margins as a best guess that will age. Apps get redesigned. Tagging a place, a collaborator or a product adds lines to some posts. Screens of different shapes crop the video differently. Staying within the box kept captions visible on the layouts that were measured; the next update may change that, and nobody can promise otherwise.
The box also knows nothing about your shot. When the most important thing in the frame sits where the caption would be, move the caption, even if the margins allow the lower spot. For a post that matters, load the finished file into the app's preview on your phone and play the opening seconds with the overlay showing.
Questions
Should captions go low in the frame, the way TV subtitles do?
Not on short vertical videos. That low strip is where both apps print the handle and the post's text, so low captions end up hidden. Lift them to sit just above it, in the lower-middle part of the picture.
Why does the guide leave more space on the right than on the left?
Both apps line up their like, share and comment buttons along the right side. On the left, a small gap is enough to stop words touching the edge of the screen.
Is the same space needed for landscape YouTube videos?
No. Landscape video needs only 5% on each side. That sits within the classic title-safe zone and keeps captions off the player's controls.