YouTube has implemented many features over the years to improve the experience for viewers.
In this article, we’ll be guiding you through the ways to add timeframed chapters to your videos and how to add descriptions for these broken down sections.
Chapters not only explain what each section of the video is about, but they also allow viewers to seamlessly skip to their favorite moments.
This feature is available in all countries for creators to use and are displayed on both desktops and mobile devices.
Manually adding chapters
The first method to adding chapters in your video, is by creating a manual list in your description box with timestaps.
To do this, simply click on the video you are looking to edit and go to the ‘Description box’ on the ‘Add details’ page.
After this, you need to insert a list timestamps and titles of the various segments that make up the video.
It is highly important to do this in the correct YouTube timestamp format for it to display:
- Timecode: the time when a chapter starts (00.00)
- Chapter Content (Beginning)
Modifications to your timestamps are pretty much immediately updated. If they do not update instantly, YouTube says they will do so within the next 24 hours.
Automatically insert chapters to videos
The second option allows a YouTube AI to analyze your video and attempt to divide it into chapters just using an algorithm.
To do this, upload your video to YouTube’s website to give it automatic chapters (not on the app). As the video is processing and you’re finalizing its relevant information, select ‘Show More’ and then tick off the ‘Allow automatic chapters’  box.
However, it is important to note that this feature is rarely effective.
The majority of the time, it will not add any chapters. If it does, the chapters are frequently picked up in the wrong timeframe.Â
You can see an example of how YouTube Chapters work in this travel vlog video below.
YouTube Chapters don’t seem to be working?
According to an article by Tubic, the various reasons as to why your timeframes are not showing could be:
- You haven’t added a 00:00 timestamp
- You have added less than 3 chapters
- One of your chapters has less than 10 seconds
- The timestamps are not listed in chronological order
- You may have entered timecodes with . instead of :
- Your channel has active copyright strikes
- Your channel has less than 1k subscribers
- Your video content could be potentially inappropriate to some viewers
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