YouTube Character Counter

How to use

1. 1Pick a device target with the Desktop / Mobile toggle. The watch page preview and description 'show more' cutoff update to match.
2. 2Type or paste your video title, description, tags, channel handle, channel description, comment, community post, playlist title, and playlist description into the fields on the left. Each field shows a live grapheme count, a colored progress bar, and a 'characters left' line.
3. 3Watch the right column for live previews: a watch page preview with the description 'show more' cutoff, a search result preview with the ~70 character title truncation, and a Shorts overlay preview with the ~50 character cutoff.
4. 4Review the description analysis panel for lines, chapter timestamps (YouTube auto-chapters fire at 3+ timestamps), hashtags, and links to make sure the description renders the way you expect.
5. 5Click Load sample to see a worked example, Clear all to reset every field, or Copy report to grab a plain-text summary of every counter for handoff or QA.

About this tool

YouTube Character Counter is a free in-browser counter that mirrors every published YouTube text limit in a single place, so a creator can write a title, description, tag set, channel handle, channel description, comment, community post, playlist title, and playlist description side by side and see exactly where each field will be cut off. The video title limit is 100 characters, but search result rows truncate around 70 characters before an ellipsis on a standard desktop result, so the tool shows a live search result preview with the cutoff applied. The video description limit is 5,000 characters; on a watch page YouTube collapses long descriptions behind a 'show more' link at roughly 157 characters on desktop and 100 on mobile, and the tool renders both layouts so you can place the hook above the fold. The video tags field has a combined 500-character budget across the comma-joined string; the tool parses the tags as you type them (comma or new line separated), shows each tag as a pill with its individual length, flags any single tag over the practical 30-character limit, and counts the comma separators the same way YouTube does so the number matches what YouTube Studio displays. The channel handle field is capped at 30 characters and the channel description at 1,000, both visible on your channel's About tab. Community posts are limited to 1,500 characters. Comments and replies on videos, Shorts, and live streams allow up to 10,000 characters each. Playlist titles cap at 150 characters and playlist descriptions at 5,000. A Shorts overlay preview shows roughly the first 50 characters of the title because YouTube truncates Shorts titles heavily before the play overlay. All counting is grapheme cluster aware via Intl.Segmenter where available, so flag emoji, surrogate-pair pictographs, and accented letters built from combining marks each count as one character, matching how YouTube Studio counts characters in its own composer. A description analysis panel breaks down lines, chapter timestamps (the lines that trigger YouTube auto-chapters when three or more are present), hashtags (YouTube uses the first three above the title), and external links so you can verify the description renders the way you expect before publishing. Useful for creators, channel managers, content marketers, video editors, agencies, and anyone writing copy for a YouTube upload. Everything runs locally in your browser; the text you paste here is never uploaded.

Free to use. Works in your browser. No signup, no login.