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How to add clickable chapters to a video

Named buttons that jump straight to a moment, so nobody has to drag a scrub bar hunting for the bit they came for.

6 minute read

Chapters are named buttons under a video that jump straight to a moment. Click "Pricing" and you are at 4:12. Nobody has to drag the scrub bar back and forth hunting for the part they came for, and nobody has to sit through six minutes of setup to reach the thirty seconds they wanted.

The builder calls them timestamps, because that is the word most people reach for. Chapters, timestamps, markers: same thing, and this guide uses them interchangeably.

They are worth adding to almost any video over about three minutes, and they take a couple of minutes to do.

Why they are worth the trouble

A long video on a web page asks a lot of somebody. They cannot see what is in it, they cannot skim it the way they would skim text, and they have no idea whether the answer they need is at the start or the end. Most people resolve that by not watching.

Chapters change the question from "will I watch this" to "which bit":

  • People find their answer. On a support or tutorial video, this is the difference between the video helping and the video being skipped in favour of an email to you.
  • The video becomes scannable. The chapter names are a contents list. Somebody can read them in three seconds and know whether the video is relevant.
  • More people start it. A specific promise ("Setting up your first project") gets clicked more than an unlabelled play button.

Adding them

In the builder, paste your video and open the Timestamps section. Then it works the way a video editor does rather than the way a form does:

  1. Press play on the preview.
  2. Pause where a chapter should begin. The panel shows the exact position you are at, and the button reads Add timestamp at 4:12.
  3. Press it, and type a name.
  4. Carry on watching and repeat.

You never have to know or type a time. If a chapter lands a second or two out, there are nudge buttons to move the playhead by one or five seconds, and every time in the list can be edited directly. Clicking the play icon on a row jumps the preview to that chapter so you can check it landed where you meant.

Where they appear

Chapters show up in two places in the finished embed. As buttons under the video, showing the time and the name, and assmall marks on the scrub bar at the point each one begins, so the shape of the video is visible while somebody is dragging through it.

Both can be turned off. The marks on the scrub bar are under Controls, in the list of things the bar shows.

One difference worth knowing. With your own control bar, clicking a chapter seeks instantly, with no reloading and no buffering from the start. Without it, there is no way to talk to the player once it is running, so a chapter reopens the video at that moment instead. That still works, it is just slower, and it is a good reason to leave the custom bar on.

Writing chapter names people click

This matters more than it sounds. The names are the only thing telling somebody what is in the video.

  • Name the content, not the structure. "Connecting your domain" beats "Part 2". Nobody is looking for Part 2.
  • Two to four words. They render as buttons and long ones wrap awkwardly, especially on a phone.
  • Use the words people would use. If your customers say "invoice" and your company says "billing document", the chapter says invoice.
  • Do not label the introduction as the introduction. A chapter called "Intro" tells people the first chapter is skippable. If it is, cut it. If it is not, name what is actually in it.

Somewhere between three and eight chapters suits most videos. One every thirty seconds is noise, and two for a twenty minute video does not help anyone.

These are not YouTube chapters

Worth separating, because the names collide. YouTube has its own chapter feature: timestamps written into the video description, which YouTube turns into segments in its own player, on youtube.com.

They are different things. YouTube's chapters are controlled by whoever uploaded the video and appear inside YouTube's player. The chapters here are yours, appear on your page, and work regardless of whether you own the video. You can add chapters to somebody else's video on your own site, which is genuinely useful when you are writing about a talk or a demo and want to point people at the relevant three minutes.

If you do own the video, doing both is worth it. They serve different audiences in different places.

If you only need one destination rather than several, astart time is simpler. And the custom control bar that makes chapters seek instantly is the same thing that lets youreplace YouTube's player chrome with your own.