YouTube Title Tester
See your title exactly as viewers will: in the home feed, in search, and in the suggested sidebar where it gets cut shortest.
Home feed
the widest, two lines of titleSearch results
larger text, thumbnail on the leftSuggested sidebar
the narrowest, where titles get cut100% freeNo account requiredNo usage limit
Previewing a YouTube title in three places
- 01
Type your title
The three previews update as you type, so you see the truncation point arrive.
- 02
Add a thumbnail
Upload a file or paste a YouTube link to pull an existing one. Uploads never leave your browser.
- 03
Read the narrowest one
If the title survives the suggested sidebar, it survives everywhere.
Deciding between two titles
Choosing between two titles
Both look fine in a text field. Only one of them still makes sense after truncation.
Checking a long title
Long titles are not automatically bad, but you need to know which words get cut.
Pairing title and thumbnail
They are read together in half a second. Seeing them side by side catches redundancy.
Measured across the 305,988 videos from 2,059 channels we track, in 65 countries. These are our own readings, not an estimate for YouTube as a whole.
- 61
- characters, median title length
- 51 %
- of titles run past 60 characters, so they get cut
- 154,625
- videos published in the last 30 days
Where does YouTube cut a title?
Where does YouTube cut off a title?+
It depends on the surface, not on a single number. The suggested sidebar is the narrowest and cuts earliest; search results give the most room. Around 60 characters is the practical ceiling if you want the whole title to survive everywhere, which is why this tool shows all three at once.
Do my uploads get sent anywhere?+
No. The image is read locally through a browser object URL and never leaves your device. Nothing is uploaded, stored or logged, which is also why there is no account and no limit.
Is this exactly what YouTube looks like?+
The widths and line counts match YouTube's desktop layouts closely, but YouTube adjusts them by screen size and tests variants continuously. Treat it as an accurate approximation, not a pixel-perfect mirror.
What about mobile?+
Mobile is narrower still and cuts titles sooner. The suggested sidebar preview here is a good proxy for it: a title that works there works on a phone.
Should I write for the shortest surface?+
Not necessarily. If your traffic comes mostly from search, a longer title that reads well there is fine. Check where your views actually come from in YouTube Studio before optimising for the wrong one.
Does the channel name affect anything?+
It occupies a line under the title on every surface, which changes how the block reads as a whole. It is there so the preview matches what a viewer actually scans.
Related tools
All tools →Spot the videos breaking out before they reach your market
VideoTrends measures every channel you follow against its own median, every four hours, and surfaces the videos that overperform.
Start free