How to Make YouTube Shorts Full Screen

Seeing your carefully crafted YouTube Short appear on screen with ugly black bars is beyond frustrating. You formatted it perfectly, or so you thought, yet it’s just not filling the screen as you envisioned. This guide will walk you through exactly how to create and upload YouTube Shorts that are properly full screen every single time, plus a neat trick for viewers who want to watch any Short in a traditional full-screen mode. We’ll cover the technical details in a simple way so you can get back to creating content that looks professional and grabs attention.

The Creator’s Guide: How to Actually Make Your Shorts Fill the Screen

For content creators, "full screen" isn't just about aesthetics, it's about performance. A properly formatted vertical video is more immersive, appears more professional, and holds viewer attention far longer. The YouTube algorithm rewards this engagement. Viewers are quick to scroll past content that looks poorly formatted, and black bars are a dead giveaway that something isn't right. Let’s make sure your videos are always ready for the spotlight.

The Non-Negotiable Rule: Master the 9:16 Aspect Ratio

If you take only one thing away from this guide, let it be this: YouTube Shorts must be in a 9:16 aspect ratio.

What does that mean? Aspect ratio is simply the proportional relationship between the width and height of a rectangle. A 9:16 ratio is a vertical rectangle - think of your phone screen held upright. This is the native format for Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikToks. Horizontal videos (like you'd watch on TV) use a 16:9 aspect ratio.

• Required Aspect Ratio: 9:16 (Vertical)
• Standard Resolution: 1080 pixels wide by 1920 pixels tall (often written as 1080x1920). This is standard high definition (HD) for vertical video.

If your video file does not have these dimensions, YouTube will attempt to fit it into the Shorts player, which results in those dreaded black bars on the sides or top and bottom.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Perfect Full-Screen Shorts

Getting the format right happens long before you hit the upload button. It starts the moment you decide to record. Follow these steps to ensure a flawless full-screen result.

1. Shoot Vertically From the Start

This is the most common mistake beginners make. Always, always hold your phone vertically when recording content intended for YouTube Shorts. Recording horizontally (landscape mode) and trying to crop the video in an editor later rarely works well. You'll lose huge portions of the video on the left and right sides, and the resulting quality will be a grainy, zoomed-in mess. Start right by shooting in the final format.

2. Check Your Camera Settings

Before you record, take 30 seconds to check your phone’s camera settings. You want to make sure you’re capturing high-quality footage.

• On iPhone: Go to Settings >, Camera >, Record Video and choose at least "1080p HD at 30 fps". Shooting at 60 fps can give you smoother slow-motion if you plan to edit with it.
• On Android: Open your Camera app, go to Settings (usually a gear icon), and find the video resolution settings. Select "FHD 1920x1080". If you select a 4K option, just be aware the files will be much larger.

Consistent, high-quality input leads to a professional-looking output.

3. Set Your Editing Project to 9:16

This step is where most formatting errors happen. When you start a new project in your video editing software, the very first thing you must do is set the project's aspect ratio or format. Don't just import your video and start trimming.

Whether you're using a mobile app like CapCut, InShot, or VN Video Editor, or desktop software like Adobe Premiere Rush or DaVinci Resolve, follow this general process:

1. Open the editing app and start a "New Project."
2. Look for a "Format," "Aspect Ratio," or "Canvas" setting immediately.
3. Select the 9:16 option. It’s often accompanied by a TikTok or phone screen icon.
4. Now, and only now, import your vertically shot video file.

By setting the canvas first, you ensure that every cut, text overlay, and graphic you add is constrained to the correct vertical dimensions. If your imported video clips don't fill the frame, you can pinch-to-zoom them slightly to fill the space, but if you shot vertically, they should fit perfectly.

4. Mind the Safe Zones (A Pro Tip)

Even though your video is full screen, the YouTube app will overlay user interface (UI) elements on top of it. These include your channel name, the video description, and the like, comment, and share buttons. These mostly occupy the bottom 20% and very top of the screen.

The "safe zone" is the area of your screen that won't be covered by any of YouTube's interface. To avoid important content being hidden:

• Place Captions Thoughtfully: Don't put captions or important text at the very bottom of the screen where they'll be hidden by the channel info and description line. Move them up slightly towards the center.
• Keep Key Action Central: Ensure the main subject of your video isn't right at the very top or bottom edge of the frame where an icon might cover them.

Think of it as having an unofficial creative margin. Keep the good stuff away from the extreme edges to guarantee it's visible to every viewer.

5. Export With the Right Settings

Once your edit is complete, it's time to export. Your export settings should mirror your project settings.

• Resolution: 1080x1920p
• Frame Rate: Match your source footage (typically 30 fps or 60 fps).
• Format: MP4 is the most universally accepted format for web video.

Nearly all modern editing apps will default to these settings if you correctly set your project to 9:16 at the start, but it never hurts to double-check before you hit that export button.

Troubleshooting: How to Fix a Short That Isn’t Full Screen

What if you’ve already uploaded a Short and it has black bars? Unfortunately, you can't edit a video directly on YouTube after it's been uploaded. The best path forward is to delete the faulty Short, fix the source file, and re-upload it.

Here’s how to diagnose the problem:

• If you see black bars on the left and right: This happened because your source video was horizontal (16:9). YouTube centered it in the vertical player and filled the empty space with black. You need to re-edit the project in a proper 9:16 timeline. Note that this will mean cropping out a lot of the horizontal scene.
• If you see black bars on the top and bottom: This occurs when your video is not tall enough for the 9:16 ratio. It might have been shot or edited as a square (1:1) or another custom format. The fix is the same: open your editing project, change the aspect ratio to 9:16, and scale your existing clips to fill the vertical frame completely.

Don't be discouraged! Every successful creator has made these formatting mistakes. Learning this process is a one-time setup that will serve you on every single video you create going forward.

The Viewer's Guide: A Hack to Watch Any YouTube Short in True Full-Screen

Sometimes, while watching Shorts, you just want to get rid of the interface and see the video in a distraction-free, full-screen player. Maybe you want to take a high-quality screenshot or analyze an edit without the UI in the way. The standard Shorts player doesn't have this option, but there's a simple URL trick - primarily for desktop users - that forces any Short into the traditional YouTube video player.

Here’s how it works:

1. Find a Short you want to view in full screen.
2. Look at the URL in your browser’s address bar. It will look like this:
   https://www.youtube.com/shorts/[VideoID]
3. All you need to do is change the word "shorts" in the URL to "watch?v=".
4. The new URL should now look like this:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=[VideoID]
5. Press Enter again to load the new URL.

That's it! The Short will now load in the familiar, standard YouTube player interface. You’ll see the timeline scrubber, quality settings, and, most importantly, the full-screen icon in the bottom-right corner. Click it, and the video will fill your monitor completely, just like any other YouTube video.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the 9:16 full-screen format is a fundamental skill for any creator serious about growing on YouTube Shorts. It instantly elevates the perceived quality of your content and improves viewer retention. Once you establish a workflow - shoot vertically, edit in a 9:16 project, and mind your safe zones - it will become second nature, guaranteeing all your future uploads look polished and professional.

Of course, once you've perfected your full-screen Shorts, the next step is planning and scheduling all that content. This is one of the main reasons we built our platform, focusing specifically on how video content works today. We made sure the scheduling calendar at Postbase handles YouTube Shorts, Reels, and TikToks natively, so you can upload your content once and be confident that it publishes reliably without a fuss. Our goal is to create modern tools that remove the friction from social media management, letting you focus more on creating.