Text at the top of a vertical video
Many short videos open with a hook line or a title across the top. The top edge is also where TikTok puts its tab row. Here's how far down that text needs to start, based on the regions this tool records.
What's at the top of each app
- TikTok. In our phone capture, the tab row (the feed tabs and the search icon) is drawn on top of the video, and you can see the video through it. Its recorded region runs from y = 5 to y = 125 on a 1080 × 1920 frame. Only the phone's status bar sat above the video.
- YouTube Shorts. The reference used here is a published measurement expressed as a band across the top edge, 138 px deep on a 1080 × 1920 frame. It's a margin, not the outline of a specific button.
- Instagram Reels. In our phone capture, the status bar and camera icon sat above the video window, not over it, so no top region is recorded for Reels. That's true for a plain Reel on that phone. Reels opened from a collection or hashtag page showed an extra header, and those weren't measured.
The full numbers are in the region tables.
Where top text can start
Across the three current references, the deepest region along the top edge ends at y = 138 (7.2% of the frame height). The tool marks anything within 24 px of a region as Warning, so a top line that's Safe on all three starts at y = 162 on a 1080 × 1920 frame, which is Y 54 in the tool's own units. Sideways, near the top stay between x = 46 and x = 942, inside the Shorts side bands. The Reels and TikTok action rails start lower, at y = 908 and y = 1223, and from there the right limit tightens to x = 936.
Starting below that line doesn't guarantee the text is readable. A hook that sits across someone's forehead or runs into a logo in the footage has its own problem. The regions only tell you where the apps draw on top.
Checking a hook line with the tool
The Subtitle box in the tool stands for any block of text, so you can use it for a hook line too:
- Load a frame from your video and switch Data to Reference · Organic.
- Drag the box over your hook text, or set Y to where the text starts and Height to how tall it is.
- Check the three platform results. If the hook is Safe, move the box down to your spoken subtitle and check that too. The tool checks one text block at a time.
What isn't covered
- Our own Shorts phone capture isn't used for results yet. Until it is, the Shorts top limit comes from the published band, and it may be deeper or shallower than what your phone shows.
- Every capture is one phone, one app version and Korean UI. Other layouts, like live badges, ads, search results or a different language, can add interface at the top.
- On a phone whose screen is close to 9:16, the video may fill more of the screen, and interface that sat outside the video on a taller phone may overlap it. That hasn't been measured.