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Ad specs and UI safe zones.
The canvas sizes for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn — and the part of every screen the platform's own interface will cover up. Updated for 2026.
- Square (1:1)
- 1080 × 1080
- Portrait (4:5)
- 1080 × 1350
- Vertical (9:16)
- 1080 × 1920
- Universal safe zone
- 900 × 1400
Export at these sizes rather than scaling up afterwards. The safe zone is centred inside the 1080 × 1920 frame.
Your call to action is behind a button.
The mistake we see most often is UI overlap — the headline, the logo or the call to action sitting exactly where the platform draws its own profile icon, caption, or Like button. The ad looks perfect in the design file and is partly hidden the moment it goes live.
It is not a design problem, it is a measurement problem. Every platform reserves part of the screen for itself, and those reserved areas are predictable. Build inside them once and you stop losing the message on every campaign after that.
The 2026 shift: Meta has consolidated its 9:16 format. A single asset now works across Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories and Reels — provided it stays inside the safe zone below.
Three canvases cover almost everything.
| Ratio | Export at | Best for | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1:1 Square | 1080 × 1080 | Multi-product carousels, legacy feed posts | Still works, but deprioritised in favour of taller formats. |
| 4:5 Portrait | 1080 × 1350 | Standard feed ads on Instagram and Facebook | Outperforms square on Meta feeds — it simply occupies more screen as people scroll. |
| 9:16 Vertical | 1080 × 1920 | TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts, all Stories | The one to build first. Full-screen, and where the growth is. |
If you only have budget to produce one asset, make it the 9:16. It is the only canvas that runs everywhere, and a 4:5 crop out of it is straightforward. Going the other way — stretching a square into full screen — is not.
Keep everything that matters in the middle.
A safe zone is the part of the frame where you can put text and logos without the platform covering them. For 9:16 content there is one rule that holds across every major platform: keep all text and logos inside a 900 × 1400 pixel area, centred in the frame. That clears the top 14% and the bottom 20%.
The column down the right-hand side is the third thing people forget. On Reels and TikTok the Like, Comment and Share icons stack vertically there, so keep logos and text at least 120 pixels clear of the right edge.
Where each one takes its bite.
| Platform | Canvas | Safe zone | What blocks it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta unified (Instagram & Facebook) |
1080 × 1920 | 928 × 1344 | Top 14% for the profile and logo, bottom 20% for the call to action. |
| TikTok Ads | 1080 × 1920 | 900 × 1442 | Bottom 370px for the ad button, right 120px for the interaction icons. |
| YouTube Shorts | 1080 × 1920 | 984 × 1500 | Bottom 300px for channel information and the subscribe button. |
| LinkedIn video | 1200 × 627 | Centre 80% | The headline and the "Sponsored" tag overlay the lower area. 1:1 also accepted. |
TikTok is the tightest of the four, so a design that survives TikTok survives everywhere. If you build to 900 × 1400 you clear all of them at once and never have to think about it again.
Four things that save a re-export.
- Treat the middle 60% as the stageYour most important visual cue belongs there. Everything outside it is negotiable, and on some device it will be covered.
- Sit higher than feels necessaryCaptions are dynamic. On TikTok a long one can take 370 pixels of height, so a call to action that looked fine against a short caption disappears behind a long one.
- Mind the right edgeThe interaction icons form a column roughly 120 pixels wide. Logos placed bottom-right are the single most common casualty.
- Check it in dark modeContrast that works on a white background can collapse on a dark one, and a large share of people never switch back.
Three local considerations.
Click-to-WhatsApp changes your bottom edge. These ads are a staple locally, and the platform draws the WhatsApp button itself. Treat that button's area as a blocker like any other — if your text sits too low, the button lands on top of your message.
Optimise the caption, not just the picture. A meaningful share of people now search inside social platforms rather than starting at Google. Your captions and alt text are indexable content, so write them for a person searching rather than as an afterthought.
Use AI for the resizing, not the story. Batch-resizing to safe zones is exactly the sort of mechanical work worth automating. The storytelling is not — audiences are increasingly good at spotting content with nobody behind it, and local nuance is the first thing to go.
The ones we get asked.
Yes. A 900 × 1400 pixel box, centred inside a 1080 × 1920 frame. That clears TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts simultaneously. If you design to that one rectangle you can stop checking the others.
It does, and this catches people out. Caption heights are dynamic — on TikTok a three-line caption can block 250 pixels or more at the bottom of the screen. Keep anything critical in the top half or the centre, never resting on the lower edge of the safe zone.
Not finished, but deprioritised. 4:5 portrait consistently does better on Meta feeds for a simple reason: it takes up more of the screen as someone scrolls past. Square still has a place in carousels. It is just no longer the default.
The canvas sizes are stable — 1080 × 1920 has held for years. The safe zones move when platforms redesign their interfaces, usually by small amounts. The 900 × 1400 rule is deliberately conservative for that reason: it has room built into it, so a minor interface change does not invalidate your whole library.
We run social media as a managed service.
Strategy, content and the day-to-day posting — built around the people who actually buy from you. If you would rather hand the whole thing over than manage safe zones every week, tell us what you are selling and we will come back with a plan.