YouTube Shorts size: 1080 x 1920 pixels

What makes a video a Short

YouTube's help page calls Shorts short form vertical videos up to three minutes long. A 9:16 upload at 1080 by 1920 is the shape that fills a phone screen in the Shorts player. Uploads above 1080p are accepted for regular videos, but YouTube says Shorts are uploaded at a maximum resolution of 1080p, so a 4K vertical master gains nothing on the Shorts shelf. Export the final file at 1080 by 1920, H.264 in an MP4 container, at the frame rate it was recorded in.

Where the interface sits

YouTube does not publish a safe zone in pixels. The figures in the table are measured from the Shorts player for this site's safe zone checker: roughly 180 pixels at the top, 390 at the bottom, 60 on the left and 120 on the right of a 1080 by 1920 frame. The bottom band holds the title, channel name and music line, and the right column holds the like, comment and share buttons. That leaves a centre column of about 900 by 1350 pixels where words and faces stay readable.

Reusing a Short on Reels and TikTok

The frame is the same 9:16 shape on all three apps, so one export can be posted everywhere, but the covered areas differ. Meta asks for 14 percent at the top and 35 percent at the bottom to be kept clear on Reels ads, a deeper bottom band than Shorts, and TikTok's buttons sit further in on the right. Designing to the strictest of the three, which in practice means a tall bottom margin and a wide right margin, avoids making three versions. The safe zone checker overlays all three boxes on one frame.

Common mistakes

Uploading a 16:9 video and expecting it to fill the Shorts player leaves bars above and below. Placing captions at the very bottom puts them under the title. Exporting at 4K wastes upload time, since Shorts are held to 1080p. Starting with a logo card wastes the first second, which also becomes the default thumbnail when no custom one is set. Burning in small type that is unreadable on a phone held at arm's length is the last common error.

Making a Short at this size

The video builder's vertical format is exactly 1080 by 1920 at 30 frames a second, so a Short can be made there directly: choose vertical in the generator, describe the video, and export an MP4. Captions are burned into the frames as a pill that sits 120 pixels above the bottom edge in vertical videos, which is inside the band the Shorts title covers, so short caption lines and a check in the safe zone checker are worth it before posting. The blank 1080 by 1920 PNG on this page is a cover frame canvas.

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