YouTube tags generator — tag list that fits the 500-character limit

How to use the YouTube tags generator

1. Type the Main topic of the video, such as “watercolour painting”.
2. Add Related keywords (comma-separated): other names, spellings or subtopics.
3. Optionally add an Audience, such as “beginners”.
4. Change Variation if you want a different order of the generated tags.
5. Copy the line under Paste into YouTube Studio and paste it into the Tags box.

What it does and when to use it

When you upload a video, YouTube Studio offers a Tags box with a 500-character limit. Filling it by hand is fiddly: you add tags one by one, lose count of characters, and repeat yourself. This tool gives you a tidy, de-duplicated list in a few seconds, with the character count shown.

Because tags carry little weight, spend most of your effort on the title and description. Use the YouTube title generator and the YouTube description generator for those. If the same video goes on Instagram, the Instagram hashtag generator builds hashtags from the same words.

How it works

The tags are built in a fixed order, and any repeat is skipped:

1. Your topic, in lower case.
2. Each related keyword.
3. The topic with each of 13 endings (tutorial, for beginners, tips, guide, explained, step by step, ideas, basics, 101, mistakes, at home, course, techniques), plus “learn” + topic. A seeded shuffle sets their order.
4. The topic + “for” + your audience.
5. For each keyword: keyword + “tips”, keyword + “for beginners” and “learn” + keyword.

Then tags are added from the top until the next one would push the total past 500 characters or the list reaches 30 tags; tags that do not fit are skipped. Everything happens in your browser.

Worked examples

Default watercolour tags. Topic “watercolour painting” with four keywords and audience “beginners”. The list has 18 tags and shows Characters used (of 500): 491. The American spelling “watercolor” is included as a keyword, which is exactly the misspelling case tags are good for.

Topic only. With no keywords, you get 15 tags made from the topic and its endings, such as learn watercolour painting and watercolour painting step by step, using 459 characters.

Two short keywords. Topic “Sourdough Bread”, keywords “starter, baking”, variation 3. The topic is lower-cased and the list of 22 tags ends with baking tips, baking for beginners, learn baking, starter tips, starter for beginners.

Limits and tips

• Endings are added to every topic, even when they do not fit; “sourdough bread course” only makes sense if there is a course. Delete tags that are not true for your video.
• Keep keywords short. Long phrases reach 500 characters after only a few tags.
• Never add tags for unrelated popular topics. YouTube’s spam policies cover misleading metadata, and tags are part of it.