One file, every platform — the 2026 spec sheet

Most people still export a video three times. There is almost no reason left to do that.

The one ratio that covers everything

9:16, 1080 × 1920. Shot once, that file plays natively on Instagram Reels and Stories, Facebook Reels and Stories, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, LinkedIn's vertical feed and Pinterest Video Pins.

Since March 2026 Meta has used a unified 9:16 safe zone, so a single asset now works across Facebook and Instagram at the same time — which used to be two exports and two sets of guesswork.

Where the interface eats your frame

The frame is 1080 × 1920. The part you can trust is smaller.

• Safe zone: roughly 1010 × 1440, centred. Keep anything that must be read inside it — faces, text, prices, the logo.
• Add another 5–10% of breathing room for captions, subtitles and stickers.
• The top and bottom bands belong to the app: profile name, caption, buttons, progress bar.

The trap is that each app puts its furniture in a slightly different place. A call-to-action positioned perfectly for Reels can sit directly under a button on TikTok. Centre-weight anything important and the problem disappears.

Where 4:5 and 1:1 still make sense

Only in the feed. 4:5 (1080 × 1350) is the tallest a feed post goes and it is the right choice there. But 4:5 and 1:1 shrink the screen in a vertical surface, and dropping them into Reels or Shorts is what produces letterboxing, UI overlap, or a crop that removes the left and right of your shot.

The reverse is safer: a 9:16 file placed into a feed slot can be contained rather than cropped. Going the other way loses picture.

A practical checklist

1. Shoot and export 9:16, 1080 × 1920.
2. Keep everything that must be read inside the centre 1010 × 1440.
3. Assume the top and bottom sixth are covered.
4. Export 4:5 separately only when the feed is the actual destination.
5. Check the first frame — it becomes the thumbnail whether you choose one or not.

Why the crop matters more than it sounds

A cropped video is not just an aesthetic problem. If the crop removes a face, a caption or the product, you have published a post that does not say what you meant. And you usually find out days later, if at all.

That is why "does this get cropped" is worth answering before publishing rather than after — the same file going to three places should be checked against all three, once.

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Sources: Klap — Reels dimensions, Zeely — Instagram safe zones, ShootLab — social video specs.