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Enabling chapters

Add chapters to your video and audio episodes so listeners can start playing from specific points.

Chapters can increase engagement with both your existing audience and potential new listeners and viewers.

There are three ways to add chapters to your episodes on Spotify:

  • Add timestamps to your episode descriptions.
  • Automatically in Spotify for Creators.
  • Use Podlove chapters in your RSS feed.

We currently only support the feature for languages that use the Latin script, but we're working towards supporting more scripts soon!

Creating your own chapters

Adding or removing timestamps

If you're adding timestamps to your episode descriptions, here are a few requirements to keep in mind:

  • Your first chapter timestamp must start at 0
    • Example: 00:00 or 00:00:00
  • There must be a minimum of 3 chapters
  • Chapters must be placed on separate new lines (or with line breaks if you're using HTML)
  • Chapters should follow a “{timestamp}{title}” format
    • (MM:SS); MM:SS; (HH:MM:SS); HH:MM:SS are all acceptable, followed by the title in plain text (try not to use emojis or HTML in your titles)
    • One punctuation mark between {timestamp}{title} is permissible
    • Example: "(00:00) Introduction" or "00:00-Introduction"
  • Chapter timestamps should be in chronological order

To remove chapters from your episodes, simply remove the timestamps from the description. Removals and other edits can take a few hours to update in on listening platforms.

Tips on chapter naming

To encourage audiences to engage with your chapters, we recommend:

  • Keeping your titles short and snappy. Aim for chapter titles under 40 characters. Listeners and viewers are likely to skim over longer chapter titles.
  • Using titles that explain clearly what that chapter covers.
  • Not making your chapters too short. Aim for a minimum chapter length of 30 seconds, and a minimum of 3 chapters per episode. If your chapters are shorter than 30 seconds, consider merging them.
  • Don’t add indexes to your chapter title as they’ll be removed. For example, "1 - Introduction" will be reformatted to "Introduction".

Using automatic chapters

Spotify can automatically generate descriptive episode chapter labels and timestamps for you. If you don’t want chapters to be generated for your episodes automatically, you can turn them off.

Note: We’re currently rolling out automatic chapters to all listeners on Spotify so you might not see them on your episodes just yet. You can add your own chapters in the meantime.

For shows hosted with Spotify

On web:

  1. Log in to Spotify for Creators
  2. Go to Settings.
  3. Scroll down to Only on Spotify.
  4. Toggle Chapters on or off.

For shows hosted elsewhere

On web:

  1. Log in to Spotify for Creators
  2. Click Settings.
  3. Next to Chapters click Update.

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