YouTube Shorts size, length and safe zone

The numbers

• Size: 1080×1920 pixels.
• Aspect ratio: 9:16 vertical. Square (1:1) also counts as a Short.
• Length: up to 3 minutes. Most strong Shorts are 20–45 seconds.
• Format: MP4, H.264, AAC audio, the same as long videos.

YouTube treats a vertical or square video of 3 minutes or less as a Short automatically. There is no separate upload button.

The safe zone: what the interface covers

On a phone, the title, channel name and music line sit over the bottom quarter of the frame, the like, comment and share buttons run down the right edge, and the search and menu icons sit at the top. Anything important placed there is partly hidden.

Keep faces, captions and on-screen text inside the middle area: roughly avoid the top 12%, the bottom 25–30% and the right 15% of the frame. The Shorts safe zone checker overlays the real layout on your frame and gives you a 1080×1920 overlay PNG to drop on top of your editing timeline.

Turning a horizontal video into a Short

Most Shorts start life as a moment from a long video. You have three ways to fill a 9:16 frame:

• Crop to fill: zooms into part of the frame. Best when the action stays in one area, like a talking head.
• Blurred background: keeps the whole wide picture in the middle with a blurred copy behind it. Best for screen recordings and gameplay.
• Bars: plain letterbox. Quick, but it looks like a repost.

The Shorts resizer does all three in the browser and exports a 1080×1920 MP4. Trim the moment first with the trim tool so you are only processing the seconds you need.

What makes Shorts hold attention

• No intro. The first frame and first line are the hook.
• A visual change every two to three seconds: a cut, a zoom, a caption, a graphic.
• Burned-in captions. Many people watch muted; auto subtitles gives you a timed SRT to import into your editor.
• An ending that loops back to the start, so the replay feels natural.

Questions