How to add timestamps and chapters to a YouTube video

Timestamps and chapters are the same thing on YouTube. You write the times in the description, and YouTube splits the progress bar into labelled sections, each with its own preview, so viewers can see what's coming and jump to the part they want. A list looks like this:

For the list to become chapters, it has to follow YouTube's rules:

A few things the rules leave free. The list doesn't have to be at the top of the description: text and links can come before it. A dash between the time and the title is fine. Past the first hour, add the hours, like 1:05:37; under an hour, minutes and seconds are enough.

Who can't use chapters. YouTube lists adding chapters among its advanced features, which channels get with enough history, or straight away by verifying your identity with an ID or a video, where YouTube offers that. Chapters also aren't available if the channel has an active Community Guidelines strike, or if YouTube decides the content may be inappropriate for some viewers.

On a computer:

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio and select Content in the left menu.
2. Click the video's title or thumbnail.
3. In the Description box, paste your list of timestamps and titles.
4. Click Save, then open the video on YouTube and hover over the progress bar to check the chapters.

You can do the same while uploading: the description is on the upload's Details step, so a new video can go live with its chapters in place.

In the YouTube Studio app: tap Content in the bottom menu, choose the video, tap the edit (pencil) icon, add the list to the description and tap Save.

In the YouTube app: tap your profile picture, then Your videos. Next to the video, tap More, then Edit, add the list to the description and tap Save.

Writing the list is quick. Finding where each topic starts is the slow part: scrubbing back and forth through a 40-minute video to find the second a new subject begins can take longer than the video itself. Three ways to do it faster:

• The free YouTube timestamp generator. Paste a YouTube link and the video plays on the page in YouTube's own player: press Add chapter at each new topic and type its name. Or choose the video or audio file: it can transcribe it on your device (free, with Whisper running in your browser, so nothing is uploaded), and you click a line of the transcript to start a chapter there, or have it suggest a first draft of chapters at natural pauses for you to rename. Already have timestamps? Paste them and it checks and tidies them. It checks YouTube's rules as you go and gives you the list to copy, in 0:00 or 00:00 style, or to download as a TXT file. No sign-up.
• Watch it fast. Play the video at 1.5× or 2× with a note open. Each time the subject changes, pause and write down the time on the player. You already know the video, so you're listening for the turns, not the details.
• Read the transcript. A new topic is easier to spot in text than in sound: the speaker says “so, the next thing” or asks a new question. The free video to text converter gives you a transcript with a time on each paragraph, and how to transcribe a video covers the other ways, including YouTube's own captions.

Whichever way, put each chapter on the first word of the new topic, not on the pause before it, so a viewer who jumps there lands on the point and not on silence.

Viewers see a chapter's title as they move along the progress bar, and in the list of chapters. It's a promise about the next few minutes, so make it specific:

• Say what's in it. “Feeding the starter” beats “Part 2”. Someone looking for one answer should find it from the titles alone.
• Keep them short. Two to five words, the important ones first. The title shares the screen with the video.
• Use the words people search for. “How long to proof the dough” is how someone types the question. Google can show your timestamps and titles in its results (below), and those words are the ones that match.
• Name the payoff, not the setup. “The mistake that ruins the crust” gets the click; “Some thoughts on baking” doesn't.
• Make the first one count. A first chapter called “Intro” that runs two minutes tells people to skip it. Keep the start short, or name it for what it actually covers.

Keep the same style across your channel: sentence case, no numbering, no emoji. Your chapter list then reads like a table of contents for the whole video, which is what it is.

When the list is in the description but the progress bar stays in one piece, it's almost always one of these:

After you save, reload the video's watch page rather than an old tab, and check on a computer and a phone. If it still doesn't work, go through the list line by line against the rules: it only takes one time out of order.

YouTube can add chapters to a video by itself. The setting is on by default for new uploads, but YouTube says not every video is eligible, and not every eligible video gets them. Chapters you write yourself always override automatic ones.

• Turn them off for one video: in YouTube Studio, open the video from Content, click Show more, and under Automatic chapters untick “Allow automatic chapters”. Click Save.
• Turn them off for every new upload: in YouTube Studio, click Settings, then Upload defaults, then Advanced settings, and untick “Allow automatic chapters (when available and eligible)”. Click Save.
• Many videos at once: YouTube also lets you change the setting in bulk, for a selection of videos.

Automatic chapters are better than none, but they're a guess: they can split a topic in the middle or give it a vague title. If a video matters, write your own. It takes a few minutes with a transcript, and you choose the words people see.

In comments. Type a time like 4:05 in a comment and, once it's posted, YouTube shows it as a link that jumps the video to that moment. YouTube added this in 2008, and it's why viewers' comments are full of times. Two uses:

• A pinned comment with the highlights, for a stream or a long video where the description is already full. Pinning comments is an advanced feature too.
• Reading your viewers' timestamps. The times people quote in comments are the moments they remember. They're a good check on your chapters, and a list of the clips worth making.

To send someone a link to a moment, click Share under the video, tick Start at, enter the time and copy the link. The free YouTube clip maker does the same for a start and an end, and how to clip a YouTube video covers the rest.

In Google search. Google can show a video's key moments in its results: its sections, each labelled, linking to the time it starts. Google Search Central says it tries to find the segments automatically, but prefers the ones you set, and that for a YouTube video you set them with timestamps and labels in the description. Its guidelines for those match YouTube's:

• Write each time as hours, minutes and seconds (leave out the hours if there aren't any).
• Put each timestamp on a new line, with its label on the same line.
• Give every label at least one word, and list the times in order.

Google says it may show key moments, so they're not guaranteed, and it doesn't say chapters help a video rank. What they do is make a long video easier to use from the results page, with the titles you wrote.

Once a long video has chapters, you've mapped its best moments: the answer to the question in the title, the story with a payoff, the mistake everyone makes. Each of those, cut to under a minute, is a Short, a TikTok or a reel, and on YouTube each Short can link back to the full video as its related video.

By hand, that's the slow part again: finding the exact start and end of each moment, reframing a wide shot to vertical, keeping the speaker in frame and captioning every word. Clyper does it from a YouTube link. It reads the transcript to find the moments, scores each one's hook, cuts on whole sentences, frames it 9:16 on whoever's talking, and captions every word in an animated style. You choose how many clips you want: up to one for every 2 minutes of video. See YouTube to Shorts with Clyper, or how to turn a YouTube video into Shorts for the whole process.