YouTube Description
Viewer
Pull the full description out of any public video — every line past the “…more” fold — with the links, hashtags and chapters split into their own lists.
Paste a link to read its description
Anything with an 11-character video ID works. You get the full text past the fold, with the links, chapters and hashtags split into their own lists.
The fold
Almost nobody clicks “…more”
YouTube shows roughly the first hundred characters — about two lines — before collapsing the rest. Everything you write past that point is read by search and by the few people who expand it.
What a viewer sees
Two lines, then a fold
The two solid lines are the entire pitch most viewers get. Everything greyed out below is there for search, chapters and the people who go looking.
How to use the space
Three zones, three jobs
- Lines 1–2
- What the video is and who it's for, in plain words. This is the only part most people read.
- Middle
- Chapters, real context, and any link a viewer genuinely needs. Chapters need 0:00 as the first stamp.
- Tail
- Socials, disclosures, boilerplate. Nobody scrolls here, so nothing load-bearing belongs in it.
Tip
Never open with your channel name or a row of hashtags. Both burn the two lines that decide whether the description does any work at all.
Chapters
Timestamps only become chapters under three rules
Chapters are the one part of a description that changes the player itself — a segmented progress bar and jump points in search. Break any of the three rules and YouTube silently leaves them as plain text.
What chapters do to the player
A segmented bar tells a viewer the video is organised before they commit to it, and lets them re-enter at the part they came for.
The first stamp must be 0:00
Start at zero or nothing becomes a chapter. This is the rule people break most often.
At least three, in order
Two timestamps stay plain text. They also have to ascend — one out of sequence disables the whole set.
Ten seconds minimum each
Segments shorter than ten seconds are ignored, so don't chapter every beat of a fast edit.
Checking someone else's
If the chapter panel above says a rule is broken on a video that clearly has timestamps, that is the one to fix — usually the missing 0:00.
Why pull one
Four things a description tells you
A competitor's description is the most candid document on their channel. It lists who pays them, what they link, and how they expect people to navigate the video.
01
Who sponsors them
Affiliate and sponsor links sit below the fold with a disclosure line. That is a list of brands already paying for videos like yours.
02
How they structure a video
The chapter list is their outline. Five chapters on a ten-minute video tells you the pacing they think their audience wants.
03
Which phrases they lead with
The first two lines are written for the fold. Read across five competitors and the phrasing their niche actually searches for becomes obvious.
04
Where they send traffic
Newsletter, Discord, shop, or nothing at all. The link they place highest is the one they care about most.
05
Recovering your own text
Reusing a description you wrote a year ago is faster than rewriting it. Pull it, edit the specifics, paste it back.
DON'T
Copy the text itself
A description is written work and belongs to whoever wrote it. Take the structure, the link placement and the phrasing patterns — never the paragraphs.
Writing your own
A description template that holds up
Same order every time, so you are only ever filling in the specifics. The whole field caps at 5,000 characters — most good descriptions use a fraction of it.
Spend the opening on meaning
Write the two lines as if they are the only thing anyone reads, because for most viewers they are. No channel name, no hashtag wall.
Chapters before links
Chapters are the part that changes the player, so they go first below the fold where an expanding viewer meets them immediately.
Two or three hashtags, at the end
Only the first three display above the title. Past fifteen YouTube ignores all of them, so the tail is the right place for a short set.
Tip
Keep the skeleton in a note and paste it for every upload. Consistency is worth more here than a fresh structure each time — regular viewers learn where to look.
Questions
Frequently asked
Why not just click “…more” on the video?
You can. This gives you the text as plain, selectable lines with the links, chapters and hashtags already separated — and it marks where the fold falls, which the video page does not.
How long can a description be?
5,000 characters. Most well-written ones use well under half of that — the constraint that matters is the two-line fold, not the cap.
Why does it say my chapters don't register?
The video has timestamps that don't qualify as chapters — no 0:00, fewer than three, out of order, or a segment under ten seconds. YouTube leaves those as plain text, and the panel names whichever rule is broken first.
Can I pull a private or unlisted video?
Unlisted works, since its metadata stays public to anyone with the link. Private and deleted videos return nothing.
Is it legal to copy someone's description?
Reading and studying it is fine. Republishing the text as your own is copying written work — take the structure and the placement, write your own words.
Do you store the links I paste?
There is no account and no history to clear. The link is sent to our server to read the video's public data, and that public data is cached for a few hours so a repeat lookup costs no API quota.
Keep going
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Pull another description
Free, no account, and no API key of your own.