Safe Area of Xcode

When the view is visible onscreen, this guide reflects the portion of the view that is not covered by other content. The safe area of a view reflects the area covered by navigation bars, tab bars, toolbars, and other ancestors that obscure a view controller’s view. (In tvOS, the safe area incorporates the screen’s bezel, as defined by the overscanCompensationInsets property of UIScreen.) It also covers any additional space defined by the view controller's additionalSafeAreaInsets property. If the view is not currently installed in a view hierarchy, or is not yet visible onscreen, the layout guide always matches the edges of the view.

For the view controller’s root view, the safe area in this property represents the entire portion of the view controller’s content that is obscured, and any additional insets that you specified. For other views in the view hierarchy, the safe area reflects only the portion of that view that is obscured. For example, if a view is entirely within the safe area of its view controller’s root view, the edge insets in this property are 0.

According to Apple, Xcode 9 — Release note
Interface Builder uses UIView.safeAreaLayoutGuide as a replacement for the deprecated Top and Bottom layout guides in UIViewController. To use the new safe area, select Safe Area Layout Guides in the File inspector for the view controller, and then add constraints between your content and the new safe area anchors. This prevents your content from being obscured by top and bottom bars, and by the overscan region on tvOS. Constraints to the safe area…