How Long Should a YouTube Title Be? (2026 Limits)

A YouTube title can be up to 100 characters, but almost nowhere shows all 100. In practice you have about 60 characters on desktop, closer to 50 on mobile, and roughly 40 in the Shorts feed — so the honest answer to "how long should my YouTube title be" is: put the promise and the keyword in the first 50 characters, and treat everything after that as a bonus nobody may read.

This guide covers every limit that applies to a title — long-form and Shorts — where each one gets cut off, and the checklist your title has to pass before you publish.

The YouTube title character limit

The hard limit is 100 characters, including spaces, emojis and any hashtags you put in the title. Type more and YouTube Studio simply will not save it.

That number is the ceiling, not the target. Treating 100 as your goal is the single most common title mistake, because the end of a long title is the first thing to disappear.

Where your title actually gets cut off

The cut-off point depends on the surface, and every surface is stricter than the limit.

Where it appears	Roughly visible
Desktop search results	60–70 characters
Mobile search	50–60 characters
Suggested videos / sidebar / end screens	50–60 characters
Mobile home feed	40–50 characters
Shorts feed	~40 characters
Hard limit (all surfaces)	100 characters

Design for the smallest window, not the biggest. If your title only makes sense when all 100 characters are visible, most viewers will never see the part that mattered.

So how long should a YouTube title be?

Aim for 50 to 60 characters of meaningful text. That length survives in full nearly everywhere, reads fast while someone scrolls, and leaves no important word at risk of being replaced by an ellipsis.

Shorter is usually stronger anyway. Cutting to 60 characters forces you to lead with the promise instead of burying it behind "In this video I'm going to show you…".

A quick way to check: read only the first 40 characters aloud. If that fragment already tells someone what the video is, and contains your keyword, the title survives truncation anywhere.

YouTube Shorts title character limit

Shorts use the same 100-character limit — but the display is far tighter, because a Short is watched on a phone in a vertical feed.

Roughly 40 characters show in the feed, so a Shorts title should be one clear idea and nothing else. Front-load it hard: the hook belongs in the first two or three words.

How to write a YouTube Shorts title and description

The title carries the hook. The description carries everything else.

The Shorts title

Keep it to about 40 characters, one idea, keyword first. No "part 3 of my series about…" preamble — there is no room for it.

The Shorts description

You get the full 5,000 characters, but only around 100 characters sit above the fold, and anything past roughly 157 characters hides behind "Show more". So the first line has to work alone: a one-sentence summary of what the Short shows.

After that first line you can add context, links and hashtags — that content is still indexed even if most viewers never expand it.

Hashtags on Shorts

You can use up to 15 hashtags per video, and the tags field holds 500 characters in total. YouTube surfaces up to three hashtags above the title. Putting them in the description rather than the title is the cleaner choice: hashtags in the title eat into your 100 characters, and YouTube treats them the same either way for search and categorisation.

What counts toward the 100 characters

The limit counts characters, not words — and a few things eat into it that people forget.

• Spaces count. Every single one.
• Emojis count, sometimes twice. Many emojis are stored as two characters, so a handful can quietly cost you ten.
• Hashtags in the title count. One #hashtag can take 10–15 characters out of your visible window, which is why the description is the better place for them.
• Capitals do not change the count, but they change the cut-off. Upper-case letters are wider, so a title in caps reaches the visual truncation point sooner than the same title in sentence case.

None of this moves the hard limit. It changes how much of your title a viewer actually sees.

Length is only the first gate, of course — what you put inside those characters is a separate skill, covered in how to write YouTube titles that get clicks.

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Not sure which version is strongest? VidTraffic can generate title options and score each one for click-potential from a single line about your video — so you can compare instead of guess. Free while we are in beta.

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You can fix a title after publishing

Nothing here is permanent. Editing a title does not reset the video, restart its performance or change the URL — so the moment you realise a title is running past the visible window, you can shorten it.

Open the video in YouTube Studio, rewrite the front of the title so the promise and the keyword land inside the first 50 characters, and save. That is the whole fix.

Frequently asked questions

What is the YouTube title character limit?

100 characters, including spaces, emojis and hashtags. YouTube Studio will not let you save a longer title.

How long should my YouTube title be for the best results?

Around 50 to 60 characters of meaningful text. That fits in search, suggestions and the mobile feed without being truncated, and it forces you to lead with the promise.

How many characters of a YouTube title are visible?

About 60–70 in desktop search, 50–60 on mobile and in suggested videos, 40–50 in the mobile home feed, and roughly 40 in the Shorts feed.

What is the YouTube Shorts title character limit?

The same 100-character limit as long-form video. In practice only about 40 characters show in the Shorts feed, so aim for that.

How long can a YouTube description be?

5,000 characters, for both long-form and Shorts. On Shorts, only about 100 characters appear above the fold and the rest hides behind "Show more", so the first line matters most.

Should I put hashtags in the title or the description?

The description. YouTube shows up to three of them above the title anyway, and hashtags in the title use up your 100 characters. You can use up to 15 hashtags per video.

Does title length affect ranking?

Not directly. But a title that gets truncated loses the part that mattered, so a fully visible title beats a long one that gets cut off.

Can I change my title after publishing?

Yes, and it does not reset the video. Rewriting the title of an under-performing video is a normal, low-risk experiment.

Where to start

Open your next title and count it. If the meaningful part runs past 60 characters, or your keyword sits after character 40, rewrite the front — not the back. Then check how it looks on a phone, because that is the screen that decides.