Creating and managing chapters

Add chapters to your video and audio episodes so your audience can start playing from specific points. Chapters can increase engagement with both your existing audience and potential new listeners and viewers.

You can add chapters to your episodes on Spotify by:

• Adding timestamps to your episode descriptions.
• Using Podlove chapters in your RSS feed.

Tip: We’re currently rolling out auto-generated chapters in Spotify for Creators. Learn more.

If you don’t have access yet, you can create your own.

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 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".

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