YouTube Title Length Checker

Check your YouTube title length free online against real display truncation limits on search, suggested videos, and mobile. See exactly where your title gets cut off.

Browser only.

How to Use This Tool

Type your titleAdd your planned video title

Watch the character countLive tracking against YouTube's real limits

Check truncation previewsSee approximately how it displays on different surfaces

The 100-Character Field Limit Isn't What Actually Matters

YouTube's title field accepts up to 100 characters, but that's rarely the limit that actually affects how viewers see your title. Search results, suggested video sidebars, and mobile thumbnails each truncate at their own shorter length based on available display width, which means a title that looks complete in the upload editor often gets cut off with an ellipsis everywhere viewers actually encounter it.

This checker shows your live character count against YouTube's field maximum, plus an approximation of how the title displays at the shorter truncation points that matter more in practice.

Front-Loading What Actually Matters

Since truncation happens at different points across different surfaces, the safest strategy is putting your most important words -- the core hook, the primary keyword -- as early in the title as possible. Anything that survives truncation on the shortest common surface (roughly 40-50 characters on some mobile contexts) is guaranteed to be seen by virtually every viewer, regardless of which surface they encounter your video through.

Balancing Completeness With Truncation Risk

A title can extend beyond the shortest truncation point to include useful additional context for viewers who see the fuller version, as long as the core message is already complete before that point. The goal isn't fitting everything within the shortest limit -- it's making sure nothing critical is lost if truncation does happen.

Frequently Asked Questions

YouTube allows up to 100 characters in the title field itself, but display truncation in search results, suggested video lists, and mobile thumbnails happens at much shorter lengths -- typically somewhere around 60-70 characters depending on the specific surface and device.

The upload editor doesn't enforce or preview the truncation that happens across different display surfaces (search results, related videos sidebar, mobile app, TV app), each of which has its own effective character limit based on available pixel width, not the 100-character field maximum.

For the most important words and the core message, yes -- front-loading what matters most ensures it survives truncation on every surface. Less critical clarifying detail can extend beyond the typical truncation point for viewers who see the full title, without losing the core message for those who don't.

Front-loaded keywords carry slightly more weight as a relevance signal, similar to how the first words of any title tend to matter more for both search algorithms and human scanning behavior. This is a secondary reason to keep your most important words near the beginning.

Extremely short titles miss the opportunity to include relevant keywords and context that help both search discovery and viewer understanding of what the video offers. There's no strict minimum, but very short titles often underperform simply by providing too little information to motivate a click.