Free tools Chapter validator

YouTube chapter validator

Chapters not showing? YouTube drops them without telling you if one rule is broken. Paste your timestamps to see exactly which rule failed, then copy a clean list straight into your description.

Free, no account Runs in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere

Your chapters, one per line

Timestamp then title, like 0:00 Intro. Accepts M:SS, MM:SS and H:MM:SS. Separators like a dash or a colon after the time are fine.

Try an example:

Paste your chapters to check them

The result updates as you type.

Paste-ready chaptersClean up separators

Fix the issues and your paste-ready chapters appear here.

Available once every rule passes.

Checking chapters is quick. Writing them isn’t.

TubeThink builds chapters from your transcript, so you start from a valid list instead of scrubbing through the video.

Try TubeThink

Chapters from the transcript Generated from what you actually said, with the timestamps already in place.

Writes the description too The chapters drop into a full draft description, so you start from a draft instead of a blank box.

Saved with the video Draft early and finalize when the video is ready. Nothing clears when you close the tab.

The rules

What YouTube needs before chapters show up

Break any one of these and YouTube ignores the whole list. It won’t show an error, the chapters just never appear.

Rule	Example of breaking it
The first chapter starts at 0:00	`0:30 Intro` as the first line
At least three chapters	Only `0:00 Intro` and `4:00 Outro`
Each chapter is at least 10 seconds long	`2:00` followed by `2:06`
Timestamps go in order	`5:00` listed before `3:00`
Each chapter has a title	`0:00` on its own, with no title after it

Questions

FAQ

Is this free?

Yes! We hope it helps you create videos more easily. No account, sign-up or limits are in place for using this tool.

My list passes but chapters still don’t show. Why?

Two things this page can’t see. The last chapter also needs at least 10 seconds before the video ends, and YouTube sometimes takes a while to process chapters after you save the description.

Where do chapters go?

In the video description, as plain lines of text. Each line needs a timestamp followed by a title. They can sit anywhere in the description. Because YouTube reads them as a reference rather than something viewers need to read, most creators put them near the bottom so they don’t take up the space viewers see first.