How YouTube decides when chapters appear in your video
My story
When I built the first version of my product and started testing how the generated chapters with timestamps worked on my own channel, I didn’t get the result I expected.
Chapters did not appear on any of my videos!
I started looking for the reason. After all, my app generates exactly the same chapters for YouTube videos as other bloggers use. There were no differences.
I carried out my own investigation and created a checklist explaining why chapters may not appear on your channel, even though they work on other channels with fewer subscribers.
Reasons and solutions
Here are 6 key points that I was able to find on Reddit, YouTube, and other specialized forums.
Common chapter issues and how to fix them
- Not enough subscribers on the channel — more than 1,000 are required. This is not officially confirmed: for some channels it works, for others it doesn’t.
- Fewer than 3 chapters added.
- A chapter is shorter than 10 seconds.
- Use a colon : as the separator between hours, minutes, and seconds — for example, 0:00 or 00:00.
- Some users have discovered that adding links to external websites and URLs can interfere with proper chapter functionality.
- And finally, I’ve heard that if your YouTube account is not verified with a phone number, chapters may not work. So you may want to check this as well.
What helped me
I tried all of the above and in my case only getting Advanced Features helped.
At this stage, you need to upload a photo of your ID or complete video verification.
The second, third, and fourth points are already handled in the development of the AI YouTube chapter generator. The remaining points are up to you 🙂
Conclusion
Now you have a complete checklist to enable chapters on your videos. Start with the simplest steps and move toward the more complex ones — and you will definitely succeed.
And when combined with my tool, the process of generating chapters for your videos becomes even easier and faster.