Shorts title character counter
Type or paste your title. We show the live character count, mark where YouTube cuts on mobile (≈40 chars in feed), where the search-result preview cuts (≈70 chars), and the YouTube hard cap (100 chars).
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Frequently asked questions
How long can a YouTube Shorts title be?
The hard cap is 100 characters — uploads with a longer title get truncated. But the limit that matters more is the visible cutoff: on the mobile Shorts feed, the title is cut at roughly 40 characters before the "..." appears. In search results and on the video page, it's cut at about 70 characters. If your hook lives past character 40, most viewers in the feed never see it.
What's the best YouTube Shorts title length?
Aim for the hook to land in the first 40 characters. Most retention-tracked Shorts have titles between 35-65 characters total: short enough to fit fully on the search page, with the punchline frontloaded so the feed-truncated preview still reads as a complete idea. Going to 100 isn't a violation but tends to hurt CTR — viewers skim past walls of text.
How many characters can YouTube fit in a Shorts title?
100 characters maximum, hard cap enforced at upload. Spaces count, emoji count as 1 each, special characters and accents count as 1 each. The counter above shows the live count plus where YouTube cuts the title in three contexts: mobile feed (~40 chars), search results (~70 chars), and the hard cap (100). Aim for green checks across all three.
Do hashtags count toward the YouTube title character limit?
Yes. If you put #shorts or any other hashtag in the title, those characters count toward the 100-character cap and toward the visible cutoffs. Each hashtag also turns into a clickable chip that takes display real estate. Most retention-optimized Shorts put hashtags in the description, not the title — saves character budget for the actual hook.
Where does YouTube cut off the Shorts title on mobile?
Around 35-45 characters in the feed view (the exact pixel limit varies with character width — narrow letters like "i" and "l" let you fit more than wide ones like "M" and "W"). The counter above flags 40 as the practical mobile cutoff because that's where the algorithm-trained creator playbook draws the line. Anything past it is invisible until the viewer taps the title.
Should I use emoji in YouTube Shorts titles?
Selectively, yes. One leading emoji (🔥 ⚡ 🎬 ❌) can grab attention on a thumbnail-grid and increase CTR, especially for niches where emojis are visually unusual. Three or more emojis read as spam and trigger the algorithm's clickbait penalty. Each emoji counts as 1 character against the title budget. Test with the counter above to see how the title fits.
Should YouTube Shorts titles be in ALL CAPS?
All caps reads as a hook to the algorithm-trained creator vocabulary, but it eats character budget faster (capitals are typically 15-20% wider in mobile fonts) and reads as shouty past the first 1-2 words. Most retention-tracked viral Shorts use sentence case with 1-2 strategically capitalized words for emphasis ("The TRUTH about…", "NEVER do this with your phone…").
Does the character counter handle emoji and accents correctly?
Yes. The counter uses Intl.Segmenter (when available) to count grapheme clusters — so each emoji is 1 character regardless of how many UTF-16 code points it uses internally (most emoji = 2 code points; skin-tone variants = 4+; family emoji = 7+). YouTube's own counter behaves the same way. Accented characters (á, ñ, ü) are also each 1 character.