Search4 min read
YouTube Title Truncation: Where the Title Is Cut in Search, Home and the Sidebar
The 100-character limit is the number the upload form enforces. The numbers that decide whether anyone reads your title are 70, 60 and 40, and nothing mentions those.
YouTube title truncation happens in a different place on every surface your video appears on. The upload form enforces a 100-character ceiling and tells you about it. Search shows roughly the first 70, the home grid around 60, and the suggested sidebar about 40 — and nothing in the interface mentions any of those.
The ceiling and the cut are different numbers
This is the distinction the whole subject turns on, and conflating the two is why people write titles to 100 characters and wonder where the end went.
The ceiling is an input limit. YouTube's own guidance on adding a title puts it at 100 characters, the form will not take more, and you find out immediately.
The cut is where a surface stops drawing the title. It is different on every surface, it is enforced by nothing, and the only way to discover it is to look at your own video in a feed. On the sidebar it is under half the ceiling.
So characters 71 to 100 of a YouTube title are real. They are stored, they are indexed, and on the surfaces most impressions arrive through, nobody sees them.
Where YouTube title truncation falls, surface by surface
| Surface | Roughly what is shown | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Search results | ~70 characters | Where a deliberate viewer finds you |
| Desktop watch page | ~70 characters | The one place a full title nearly survives |
| Home and mobile grid | ~60 characters | Where most impressions actually happen |
| Suggested sidebar | ~40 characters | The harshest crop on the platform |
| Shorts shelf | Two short lines | Tighter again, on a narrow tile |
Every one of those is an approximation of a pixel measurement, not a character rule. A surface stops at a width. A title in narrow lower-case characters survives past the figure quoted; a title with a run of capitals is gone before it, because capitals are wider. That is also why the same title truncates differently on two phones.
FreeMentioned in this article
Title TruncatorOne title, and the exact point every surface stops showing it.It runs one title against all of them at once and shows what survives each cut, what is lost, and whether the surviving fragment still reads as a complete phrase.
Being cut is fine. Being cut mid-idea is not
Almost every good title is truncated somewhere, and it usually costs nothing at all.
What costs something is the difference between these two cuts of the same title:
I Tested Every Sourdough Starter Method for 30 Days and the Cheapest…
I Tested Every Sourdough Starter Method for 30 Days and the…
The first is a shorter title. The second is a broken one. The words are identical; the cut landed one word later, and the fragment now ends on a function word that cannot stand alone. A viewer reads the second as an error rather than as a title with more behind it.
This is the only real editorial decision truncation forces, and it is decided by which word happens to sit at the boundary — which is why looking at the cut is worth more than counting to 60.
Front-load the subject, not the keyword
The usual advice is to front-load the keyword. The more useful version is to front-load whatever tells somebody what this is, which is normally the same words and occasionally is not.
The test is the sidebar. If the first 40 characters of your title do not say what the video is about, the video will not be picked up beside anybody else's — and suggested is where a channel grows. Everything after that is detail for the surfaces that show more.
That is also the order how to write headlines argues for on general grounds, and YouTube title length covers the limit itself in more depth.
What to actually do
- Write the title you want. Do not write to a character count.
- Check where it cuts on the surfaces you get impressions from.
- If it cuts mid-idea, move one word rather than rewriting the title.
- Make sure the first 40 characters name the subject.
- Watch the capitals. A run of them makes every figure above optimistic, and
title case covers whether you wanted them in the first place.
How many characters of a YouTube title are shown?
About 70 in search and on the desktop watch page, around 60 in the home and mobile grid, and about 40 in the suggested sidebar. The 100-character figure is the input limit, not what is shown.
What is the YouTube title character limit?
One hundred characters, enforced by the upload form. Everything past roughly 70 exists for search to read rather than for a viewer to see.
Does a truncated title hurt a video?
Only when it is cut mid-idea. A title cut after a complete phrase reads as a shorter title; one cut after "and the" reads as broken.
Why does my title get cut differently on mobile?
Because truncation is a pixel width rather than a character count, and a phone column is narrower. Capitals and wide characters are cut earlier than lower-case ones.
Paste your title into the title truncator and read the verdict column before the character count.
Put it to work
Tools for the job you just read about
Free to run, most of them without an account.
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Title Truncator
One title, and the exact point every surface stops showing it.
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Paragraph breaks that survive the paste into Instagram.
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Names every character in your text that you cannot see, and takes out the ones you did not want.
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Sponsorship Disclosure Generator
The right wording, and — the part that actually gets people in trouble — the right placement.
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