YouTube Description Checker
Count your description against YouTube's 5,000-character limit and see exactly where the “…more” fold cuts it — on desktop, mobile and in search. Free, no login, nothing leaves your browser.
605
Characters
95
Words
16
Lines
2
Links
3
Hashtags
Within the 5,000-character limit
4,395 characters spare. Line breaks and spaces count toward the total.
3 hashtags
The first 3 appear above your video title: #youtubetips #contentstrategy #creatoreconomy. The rest still count, they just don't show there.
Opening fills the visible space
About the first 100–150 characters show before "…more" — check the preview below and make sure the promise of the video is in there.
5 timestamp lines — chapters look likely
Each one also has to run at least 10 seconds, which depends on your video's length — the chapters validator checks that part.
2 links
YouTube makes http, https and www. addresses clickable automatically — no markup needed, and no limit on how many.
What viewers actually see
Everything past “…more” needs a click. Roughly the first 100–150 characters do all the work — in the collapsed box, on mobile, and in search.
Under the video (desktop)
#youtubetips #contentstrategy #creatoreconomyYour video title
24K views · 3 days ago
Mobile
Your video title
24K views · 3d ago
Search result
Your video title
24K views · 3 days ago
Previews use your browser's own rendering to approximate YouTube's — the exact fold shifts by a word or two with window width and device. Nothing you paste here leaves your browser.
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YouTube gives you 5,000 characters and shows about the first 100–150of them. Everything else is behind a click. This tool counts what YouTube counts — spaces and line breaks included — and renders your real text at each surface's width so you can see which words survive the fold.
The opening is the whole job
Three lines under the video on desktop, fewer on a phone, and a two-line snippet in search: that's the part of your description that gets read. It has two audiences at once — a viewer deciding whether to keep watching, and YouTube's index looking for what the video is about. A first line spent on “Welcome back to the channel!” or a link serves neither. Lead with what the video actually delivers, in the words someone would search for.
The two hard limits
The 5,000-character cap is the obvious one. The other catches people out: more than 15 hashtags and YouTube ignores all of them, not just the extras — so an over-stuffed description gets exactly the same treatment as one with none. The first three are the ones that render above your video title. Our hashtag extractorpulls them out of an existing video if you want to check one you've already published.
Timestamps, links and the rest
Chapters are built from the description too — at least three timestamps, the first at 0:00, each at least 10 seconds long. This tool flags whether yours look like a chapter list; the chapters validator checks them properly against your video's length. Links need no markup: http, https and www. addresses are made clickable automatically.
What a description can't do
No description rescues a video about the wrong topic. Once the metadata is right — the title length checker is this tool's counterpart for titles, and the Video SEO Checkeraudits a published video end to end — the question that's left is what to make next. VidHalo answers that one: it reads the transcripts, chapters and comments of the videos already ranking for your topic and writes you the brief to beat them. We covered the wider metadata picture in how to outrank a YouTube video.
Frequently asked questions
What is YouTube's description character limit?+
5,000 characters, including spaces and line breaks. It's a hard cap — Studio won't save a longer description, and pasting one in simply truncates at the limit. The meter above counts exactly what YouTube counts.
How much of the description shows before 'show more'?+
Only about the first 100–150 characters — roughly three lines under the video on desktop, and less on a phone. Everything after that needs a deliberate click, which most viewers never give it. It's a line measurement rather than a character one, so the previews above render your real text at each surface's width instead of cutting at a fixed count.
Do line breaks count toward the 5,000 characters?+
Yes. Every space and newline is a character. A description padded with blank lines between sections burns the limit and, more importantly, burns the visible opening — a description that starts with an empty line has already spent one of its three visible lines saying nothing.
How many hashtags can I put in a description?+
Fifteen. Past that YouTube ignores every hashtag on the video, not just the ones over the line — so 20 hashtags gets you the same result as none. The first three also render above your video title, so they're the ones people actually see.
Do links in the description work automatically?+
Yes — http, https and www. addresses become clickable on their own, with no markup and no limit on how many. Keep them below the fold though: a URL in the first line spends your most valuable space on something nobody clicks from there.
Does a longer description rank better?+
Not on its own, and anyone promising that is guessing. What's true is narrower: YouTube indexes the text, so a description with nothing in it gives search nothing to match, and viewers deciding whether to keep watching read the opening lines. Write for those two jobs and length takes care of itself.
Where do chapters come from?+
The description. YouTube builds chapters from timestamp lines when there are at least three, the first starts at 0:00, and each runs at least 10 seconds. This tool flags whether your timestamps look like a chapter list; the chapters validator checks them against your actual video length.
More free tools
Don't just fix one video — outrank the ones beating you.
VidHalo reads the top-ranking videos for your topic — what they cover, where they're thin, what viewers still ask — and hands you the brief to beat them. Free tools get you started; the trial does the rest.