The limit that matters isn’t 100 — it’s the fold
YouTube lets you write 100 characters, but almost nobody sees all 100. In the feed, on the sidebar, on a phone, the title wraps to two lines and then disappears behind an ellipsis — and where that cut lands depends on the column width, not a tidy number. So the real skill is getting the hook and the keyword in before the fold. This tool shows the hard count and the truncation together, with separate desktop and mobile previews, because a title that looks complete on your editing screen can lose its payoff on a phone. It’s the same fold problem our caption previewer solves for feed captions.
Front-load the hook, bank the rest
Treat the first ~60 characters as the whole title and everything after as a bonus that might not be seen. That means leading with the specific promise — the number, the result, the surprise — and pushing qualifiers and secondary keywords to the end. It’s the same logic as a headline or a hook: the opening earns the click. If you’re starting from a blank title, our hook generator gives you opening lines built from proven frameworks, and the YouTube chapter generator turns your transcript into timestamps once the video is up.
Frequently asked questions
What's the character limit for a YouTube title?
YouTube caps titles at 100 characters — anything past that is simply not saved. But the limit you should actually design for is much lower: titles wrap to two lines and then get cut with an ellipsis, and that fold lands well before 100. In practice, keeping the meaningful part under roughly 60 characters means it reads in full across most surfaces before it wraps. This tool shows both the hard 100 count and where the feed truncates.
Where does YouTube cut off the title?
It depends on the surface and the device, because the title truncates by the width of its column, not a fixed character count. On a desktop grid the title has room for about two lines before the ellipsis; on a phone the column is narrower, so it cuts sooner. That's why this tool shows a desktop and a mobile preview side by side rather than one number — you can see the exact word each one ends on and make sure the hook survives the cut.
How long should a YouTube title be?
Long enough to be specific, short enough to survive the fold — usually 40 to 60 characters for the part that has to land. The classic mistake is burying the payoff at the end of a 90-character title, where the feed hides it behind '…'. Lead with the hook or the keyword, keep the title honest to the video, and treat anything after ~60 characters as a bonus that may not be seen. The previews here make that trade-off visible.
Do keywords in the title still matter?
Yes, but for humans first. A title's job is to earn the click in a crowded feed, so a clear, specific hook beats a keyword-stuffed one every time. That said, putting the main keyword near the front helps both the viewer scanning the feed and YouTube understanding the video — and since the front of the title is the part that always shows before the fold, front-loading serves both goals at once. Write for the click, place the keyword early, and don't pad the end with tags.
Is my title or thumbnail uploaded anywhere?
No. The character count, the truncation, and the card preview all run in your browser, and the thumbnail you add is only used to render the preview locally — it's never sent to a server, there's no account, and nothing is stored when you close the tab.