How to Crop a Video for TikTok

The fastest way to crop a video for TikTok is to reframe it to 9:16 before you upload, keeping the subject inside the new frame, or to keep the original shape and stack it inside a vertical canvas instead. Here's both routes, and the frame sizes TikTok actually publishes.

Open the free Video Cropper →

Crop a video for TikTok to the frame it publishes

TikTok's specifications list the shapes it accepts and the minimum size for each: 9:16 vertical at 540x960 pixels or larger as the recommended option, 16:9 at 960x540 or larger, and 1:1 at 640x640 or larger. Vertical is the recommendation, and it's the one the feed is built around.

Inside the app, TikTok's editing tools let you rotate or zoom in and out of frame of individual clips, which is enough to recentre a shot that's slightly off. It is not a precision crop tool, and it works clip by clip rather than across a whole edit.

Stacking beats cropping when the sides matter

Cropping is subtractive: a 16:9 frame taken down to 9:16 loses most of its width, and whatever was at the edges goes with it. TikTok's editor also supports photo and video overlays for picture-in-picture , or video-in-video , stacking, and that's the alternative worth knowing. The full horizontal frame sits inside the vertical canvas, and the space above and below becomes somewhere to put a title, a reaction or a second angle instead of dead grey bars.

Composing inside the vertical frame instead of trimming it down

Montaj edits in a vertical 9:16 frame and supports B-roll layers with split-screen, so a second clip can sit above or below the main one rather than fighting it for width. You place those layers yourself, on a real timeline, and everything renders on your device without the footage being uploaded anywhere. Deciding how to crop a video for TikTok gets easier once you can see both clips in the frame they'll actually be watched in.