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Captions nobody has to squint at

Captions get cut off in two ways: the words run past the edge of the frame, or they sit where TikTok, Shorts or Reels draw their buttons, title and description. Keep each caption short enough to fit, then place it inside the safe area, clear of the bottom quarter and the button column on the right.

Updated 28 October 2026

Two different problems

If letters are missing at the left and right, the caption is wider than the video. Big fonts, long words in capitals and tools that never measure the line all cause it. If every word is there but a like button or the channel name sits on top of it, the caption is inside the app's interface, and only moving it helps.

Cuecaps takes care of the first problem: no caption line may be wider than 88% of the frame, and a line that would be wider is scaled down until it fits. In the studio a long caption gets smaller instead of clipped, which is your cue to show fewer letters at a time.

Placing captions in the safe area

  1. Open the studio, add your clip and run Find words.
  2. In the Layout tab, check that Shape is 9:16. The safe-area guide is only drawn on vertical video.
  3. Click Show Shorts safe area beside the preview. A dashed box marks the part of the frame the Shorts buttons and title leave clear.
  4. Under Position, choose Middle or Bottom, or drag the caption on the preview until every line sits inside the box.
  5. If captions look small or crowded, lower Most letters per caption or set Lines to One line, then play the clip through once.
  6. Export the MP4. The dashed box is only drawn over the preview, never into the video.

Bottom places the middle of the caption at 72% of the frame height, just above the band where the title and description sit. Top places it at 20%, below the app's top bar.

What the guide keeps clear

  • The bottom 24% of the frame: the video title, channel name and description.
  • The right 16%: the column of like, comment and share buttons.
  • The top 11%: the app's top bar.
  • A 6% margin on the left, so no letter touches the edge.

TikTok and Reels put their buttons in slightly different places than Shorts. If one clip goes to all three, load a frame into the free safe zone checker, which draws each app's overlay over your own video.

One-word styles almost never come near the edges, and boxed styles show clearly where the caption ends:

Clean TikTok Sans in normal case, one word at a time, with a soft shadow and no outline.
Use Clean on your video
Boxed Dark TikTok Sans on a white box, up to four words at a time.
Use Boxed on your video
Editorial Instrument Serif with punctuation kept, up to six words on two lines. Words not yet spoken are dimmed.
Use Editorial on your video

Some previews use a frame from Sprite Fright by Blender Studio, CC BY 4.0, cropped.

Questions

Why are my captions cut off at the sides?

The caption line is wider than the frame. Show fewer letters per caption or switch to a narrower font. Cuecaps scales any line wider than 88% of the frame down to fit, so its exports never clip at the sides.

Where should captions go on YouTube Shorts?

Above the bottom quarter of the frame and left of the button column. A little below the middle works for most talking clips, because it clears both the speaker's face and the buttons.

Is the safe area the same on TikTok and Reels?

Close, but not identical, and each app changes its layout from time to time. The safe zone checker shows TikTok, Reels and Shorts separately.

Can I fix captions on a video I already posted?

Not on the same upload. Burned-in captions are part of the picture, so you need to move them in the studio, export again and repost.

Try it on your video

You can also drop a file anywhere on this page. Or tryTry the demo clip

Fix it in Cuecaps