How Long Should a YouTube Title Be?

The short answer: aim for 50 to 60 characters. YouTube allows up to 100, but most feeds truncate somewhere between 50 and 70 depending on the surface and device, so anything past that point may never be seen. The real skill is not staying under a number. It is making the first six words do the work.

Where YouTube actually cuts titles off

There is no single truncation point. Search results, the home feed, suggested videos, and mobile each cut at different lengths, and mobile is the harshest. Since more than half of watch time happens on phones, the safe assumption is that a viewer sees roughly the first 50 characters and everything after that is a bonus.

That is why the practical rule is front loading: the payoff of your title lives in the first few words, and the rest adds context. If the interesting part of your title arrives at character 70, for most viewers it never arrives at all.

Short is not the goal, front loaded is

A 40 character title that wastes its opening on setup words performs worse than a 65 character title that leads with the hook. Cutting length only helps when what survives is the strongest part. A useful test: cover everything after the first six words and ask whether what remains would still make a stranger curious. If not, reorder before you trim.

Weak: I tried making a boat out of cardboard and testing it on a lake.
Strong: Cardboard boat vs a real lake. It survived 4 hours.
Weak: A complete beginner's guide to getting more views with editing.
Strong: The editing change that doubled my watch time.

Should you use keywords in the title?

Only where they read naturally. YouTube understands what your video is about from far more than the title, and stuffing search phrases into a title that humans will scan costs you clicks to win an algorithmic signal that barely moves. Write for the click first. If a keyword fits the honest promise of the video, place it early, since that helps search and browse alike.

Find out if your title earns the click

Drop in your video and get a scored breakdown of your title, thumbnail, hook, pace, and more before you post. Free to start.

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Frequently asked questions

›What is the character limit for YouTube titles?

The hard limit is 100 characters. But feeds truncate well before that, often around 50 to 70 characters depending on surface and device, so treat 60 as the practical ceiling and put the payoff in the first few words.

›Do longer titles hurt views?

Length itself does not hurt. What hurts is the payoff getting truncated away or buried behind setup words. A long title that leads with its hook outperforms a short title that wastes its opening.

›Should YouTube titles be in caps?

All caps titles read as shouting and get skipped more than they get clicked. Capitalizing one payoff word for emphasis can work. Capitalizing everything makes the title harder to read at a glance, which is the opposite of what a feed title needs.

›How do I know if my title is good before posting?

Score it. Uploadworthy's free title analyzer gives any title a 1 to 100 score with specific fixes and two stronger rewrites, no account needed. The full analysis scores the title against your actual video along with thumbnail, hook, and pacing.