Guide: TikTok Safe Zones for Gaming Clips
Guide: TikTok Safe Zones for Gaming Clips
TikTok (and YouTube Shorts) draw their UI on top of your video. If your captions, facecam, or kill feed sit under a button, viewers can't see them. This cheat sheet maps the danger zones of a 9:16 frame and shows where to put each element in your EzClap layout.
The danger zones
Think of the 1080×1920 frame in bands:
- Top ~10% — search icon, "Following / For You" tabs (TikTok); channel row (Shorts). Avoid critical text at the very top.
- Right edge, roughly the bottom two-thirds — the engagement rail: profile, like, comment, share buttons stacked vertically. Anything within ~15% of the right edge in that region gets covered.
- Bottom ~20–25% — username, post caption text, sounds row, and the seek bar. This is the most-covered region and the classic caption-placement mistake.
- Left edge — mostly safe, but keep a small margin.
The safe sweet spot is the center band: horizontally centered, roughly 25–70% down the frame.
Where to put each element
Burned-in captions — set text position (vertical %) in caption styles near 50%. Centered captions never fight the bottom UI, and mid-frame text also performs better in feeds because it's where the eye already rests. Keep max words per line at ~3 so the text block never reaches the right rail.
Facecam — top of the frame is the standard for gaming clips. With a top camera position the cam band naturally clears the bottom UI. With floating placement, keep the cam in the upper third and off the right edge; upper-left or upper-center are the safest corners.
Logo / watermark — corners get covered the least at the top-left. Avoid bottom-right entirely (share button territory).
Gameplay focus — with custom gameplay area enabled in the Clip Wizard, frame the crop so the action (crosshair, character) lands center-frame. Kill feeds and minimaps at the source's screen corners are usually cropped out by a vertical cut anyway — don't fight to keep them.
Use the wizard's built-in guides
You don't have to eyeball any of this:
- In the Clip Wizard preview, toggle the safe zones guide — it overlays the region that stays visible under platform UI. Keep captions, cam, and logo inside it.
- Toggle thirds and crosshair to balance the composition once you're inside the safe area.
- Generate a test preview and drag the facecam/logo until nothing important touches the danger bands.
Save the result as a template and every clip you publish to TikTok or Shorts inherits safe placement automatically.
Quick checklist
- Captions at ~50% vertical, 3 words per line max
- Facecam top third, clear of the right edge
- Logo top-left
- Nothing meaningful in the bottom quarter or along the right rail
- Verified once with the safe zones guide, saved as a template