9:16 vertical video format: dimensions and safe zones

A phone is held upright. The feeds of TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts and, now, LinkedIn are made for that position: a vertical video takes up the whole screen there, a horizontal video takes up only a band of it.

The format that fills that screen is called 9:16. Here is what you need to know about it, from what the platforms publish themselves. Their pages were read on 1 October 2026 and they change: the links are at the bottom of the article.

What 9:16 is

It is a ratio between width and height: nine units wide, sixteen high. In other words, a television’s picture turned on its side.

Two common sizes:

• 1080 × 1920 pixels, vertical Full HD;
• 720 × 1280 pixels, plain HD.

The ratio matters more than the size. A 9:16 video fills the screen whatever its resolution; a video of higher resolution but another ratio will be cropped or surrounded by margins.

What each platform accepts

A few useful details.

YouTube classes as a Short any square or vertical video of three minutes at most uploaded since 15 October 2024. It gives a maximum resolution of 1080p for Shorts.

Instagram accepts reels of up to 20 minutes, but warns that those longer than 3 minutes are not recommended to new audiences. It asks for at least 720 pixels and 30 frames per second.

TikTok gives its lengths in its help pages, but no format for ordinary posts. Its ad specifications recommend 9:16 vertical.

LinkedIn gives its limits on its help page about sharing videos. We go through them in LinkedIn video: formats, length and captions.

Why 1080 × 1920

None of the four platforms imposes that size on ordinary posts. It is the right choice all the same, because it is the largest size they all have in common:

• it fits within every ratio accepted above;
• it matches the maximum resolution YouTube gives for Shorts;
• it is the maximum size of 9:16 vertical in LinkedIn’s ad specifications;
• Google Ads writes that 9:16 is the format best suited to Shorts.

So a 1080 × 1920 file in MP4 can be posted everywhere without being altered.

Safe zones: where nothing should be

The platforms lay their interface over the video: the account name, the description, the buttons to like, comment and share. What lies underneath can no longer be seen.

Each one publishes its margins, most often for its ad formats. They give a good order of magnitude for any video.

The values for LinkedIn, YouTube and TikTok are read on the diagrams those platforms publish, not in their text. Those for YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are about their ads: Google Ads, Meta’s ads guide and the TikTok specifications cited above.

They look alike, and that is what counts. The rule that respects all of them:

• leave the bottom third of the picture free, that is where everything is displayed;
• leave a free band at the top, about a seventh of the height;
• keep a margin on the right, where the buttons are.

So your face and your captions go in the centre, a little above the middle.

From a horizontal picture to a vertical frame

A webcam, a camera or a screen recording films in 16:9, horizontally. To make a vertical video of it, there are two methods.

Adding margins. You place the horizontal picture in the middle of the vertical frame and fill the rest with black or with blur. It is quick, and the result is a small picture in a large frame. YouTube advises against adding black bars to a video yourself.

Cropping. You cut a vertical frame out of the picture. At full height, it keeps only a little under a third of the width. Everything then depends on what is in it:

• if the person is in the centre, they stay in it;
• if they are off to one side, the frame has to be moved towards them;
• if there are two people, they do not fit together: you show the one who is speaking, and you cut from one to the other.

That is one more reason to sit in the centre in front of your webcam. We give the others in How to look good on video calls.

File and frame rate

MP4 is the format every platform names: LinkedIn, Meta for Reels, and TikTok, whose developer documentation recommends it with the H.264 codec.

As for the frame rate, 30 frames per second are enough for a person talking. It is the minimum Instagram asks for.

The mistakes that keep coming up

• Text in the bottom third. It ends up under the description and the buttons.
• A horizontal video between two bars. It takes up only a third of the screen.
• An off-centre subject. The crop cuts off a shoulder or half the face.
• Captions that are too small. What reads on a computer does not read on a phone held at arm’s length.
• A logo in a corner. The corners are the first to be covered.

What Dailies does

Dailies records the calls you hold in Chrome, in French or in English. Its extension’s interface is in French. It cuts 9:16 vertical shorts from them, reframed on whoever is speaking: your webcam, or your guest when they speak. The captions are burned into the picture, and you download each short in Full HD to post it yourself.

The same file goes on all four platforms. What is left for you is to choose which passages deserve to go there.

Key takeaways

• 9:16 at 1080 × 1920 pixels, as an MP4, is accepted by LinkedIn, TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts.
• The maximum lengths differ: 3 minutes for a Short, 15 for LinkedIn, more elsewhere.
• Leave the bottom third, a band at the top and a margin on the right free.
• Crop rather than add bars, and sit in the centre of the picture.

Sources

Pages read on 1 October 2026.

• LinkedIn: sharing videos on LinkedIn and video ad specifications.
• YouTube: three-minute Shorts, creating Shorts, resolution and aspect ratio.
• Google Ads: videos for Shorts and video ad specifications.
• Instagram: recording a reel and size and aspect ratios of reels.
• Meta, Reels ads guide.
• TikTok: video length, ad specifications, developer documentation.