YouTube post limits: description length and video length
YouTube only takes video — one per post, up to 12 hours long. The description can run to 5,000 characters, and about the first 157 show before “…more”.
YouTube limits at a glance
- Description limit
- 5,000 characters
- Visible before “more”
- ~157 characters
- Images
- Not accepted — video only
- Video length
- 1 second to 12 hours
- Most media per post
- 1
- Text-only posts
- No — video required
- Links clickable in text
- Yes
These are the limits for publishing through a scheduling tool — YouTube’s publishing API — and they are the same rules our editor checks as you write. Posting by hand in the YouTube app can allow a little more on some limits.
Planning a YouTube post
- Put what the video is about in the first ~157 characters of the description.
- Links in the description are clickable, so it is a good place for sources and sign-up links.
- An image or text-only post cannot publish to YouTube; plan the video first.
Shorts or a long video
YouTube decides which one a video is from its shape and length. A vertical or square video up to three minutes long becomes a Short and appears in the Shorts feed; anything longer, or landscape, is a regular video.
| Short | Regular video | |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | Vertical 9:16 or square | Usually landscape 16:9 |
| Size | 1080 × 1920 px | 1920 × 1080 px or larger |
| Length | Up to 3 minutes | Up to 12 hours |
| Where it appears | The Shorts feed | Search, recommendations, the channel page |
Long uploads need a verified channel
The 12 hours maximum applies to verified channels. An unverified channel can only upload videos up to 15 minutes long. Verifying takes a phone number and a few minutes in YouTube’s settings, and it also unlocks custom thumbnails — so verify a client’s channel before the first long video is due, not on the day.
Title, description and tags
- Title: up to 100 characters. Put the searchable words first; long titles are cut off in search and recommendations
- Description: up to 5,000 characters, with about the first 157 shown before “…more”. Say what the video is about there
- Tags: up to 500 characters in total. They matter far less than the title and description
Links in the description are clickable, which makes it the right home for sources, products and sign-up links. Timestamps in the description — starting at 0:00, with at least three chapters of ten seconds or more — turn into chapters on the video’s progress bar.
Thumbnails
For a regular video, the thumbnail does more for clicks than anything in the title. Use 1280 × 720 px (16:9), keep any text large enough to read on a phone, and remember the video’s length is shown in the bottom-right corner, on top of the image.
If there is no custom thumbnail, YouTube offers frames from the video. A cover chosen by scoring frames for sharpness and exposure is far more likely to be usable than the first frame, which is often a fade from black.