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One title, three different cuts

A hundred characters allowed, about 70 visible on a desktop, about 55 on a phone — and shorter again in the sidebar and on a watch page. You cannot satisfy all of them, so the question is which one you are writing for.

Stay under the cutoff.

YouTube allows 100 characters in a title, but search results only reliably show about 70 — and mobile shows even less. Your keyword and hook need to land before that.

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Desktop search result

Your title preview…

Mobile search result

Your title preview…

Where a title gets cut, and by how much

There is no single limit, which is why the usual advice — “keep it under 60” — is a rounding of one surface presented as a rule for all of them.

Hard limit100

YouTube will not accept more. Almost nobody should get near it.

Desktop search and home~70

Two lines. The number most guidance is quietly talking about.

Mobile~55

Where most of your views come from, and the tightest constraint that matters.

Sidebar and suggestedshorter still

Narrow column, often one line. Frequently the place a new viewer first sees you.

These are approximate for the same reason Instagram's is: the cut is by available width, not by character count, so a title of wide letters truncates earlier than one of narrow ones.

Front-load, and stop trying to fit

The resolution to three incompatible cuts is not a shorter title. It is putting everything that matters in the first 50 characters and letting the rest be cut wherever it likes.

A title that reads How to fix a leaking tap without a plumber — full guide, 2026 works on every surface, because the first 40 characters carry it. A title that reads Everything you need to know about fixing a leaking tap loses its subject at exactly the wrong moment.

Front-loading also serves search, which weights the beginning of a title more heavily than the end. The two goals point the same way, which is rare enough to be worth taking.

What belongs in the first 50

The subject, in the words people search

Not your clever name for it. The phrase somebody types when they have this problem.

The outcome or the format

"How to", "Review", "vs", "explained", "in 10 minutes" — what kind of video this is, early.

Not the year

It is the most common thing people put first and it is the least useful. Move it to the end, where being cut costs nothing.

Not your channel name

It is already under the title, in the channel row, and on the avatar. Repeating it spends characters on something the viewer can already see.

And a note on capital letters

A word in full capitals is wider than the same word in lower case, so it truncates earlier — a title in ALL CAPS loses several characters of visible length before anything else happens.

If you want a word emphasised, one is enough. If you want the title to survive the cut, the case converter will put it into title case in a second.

The other platforms cut differently: Instagram at one point, LinkedIn at two, and X counts links and emoji unusually before any cut applies.

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