TikTok character counter

How to write a caption and a bio that fit

TikTok asks you to write in a field that sits on top of a playing video, which is a poor place to judge anything. Write the text here first, then move it across in one piece.

1. 1Paste the caption into the box above rather than typing it into the app, where the field is small and half of it is covered by the interface.
2. 2Write the first line as though it were the whole caption, because the player shows a line or so before a viewer has to tap for the rest.
3. 3Put the hashtags on the end and count them in: they come out of the same 4,000 characters as the words do.
4. 4Switch to the bio and rewrite from the idea rather than trimming. 80 characters is roughly one short sentence, and a shortened caption never survives the move.
5. 5Check emoji last. A skin-toned or professional emoji is a single character to a reader and several to a counter measuring code units.
6. 6Copy the finished text and paste it into the upload screen in one action, from the desktop uploader if you have the option.

Two fields, and everything that shares them

TikTok has fewer text fields than anything else in this family, and one of them is the tightest on this page by some way, so the two need completely different writing.

• Caption: 4,000 characters. Hashtags count towards the same total. Publishing tools that post through TikTok's API stop at 2,200.
• Bio: 80 characters. Roughly one line, with no second line to continue on, so the description, the call to action and any link text all compete for the same sentence.
• A caption is charged for everything visible in it: the words, the spaces, the hashtags, the mentions and the emoji.
• Mentions are charged with the at sign, so tagging a few creators takes a noticeable bite out of a short caption.
• A link typed into a caption is plain text and not clickable, which makes those characters the worst value in the field.
• The clickable link on a profile is a separate field available to eligible accounts, and it does not come out of the bio.
• What you see under a video is the caption itself; there is no longer description field hiding behind it.
• Text you burn onto the video in the editor is part of the video rather than the caption, so it is not counted here at all.

Why the bio is the hard one

The bio is where the counting actually bites. Around eighty characters leaves no room for a sentence that warms up, and the usual failure is a bio written for another platform and squeezed until it stops making sense.

• A bio written for Instagram does not shrink into this field; it has to be rewritten from the idea rather than edited down from the words.
• Counting code units makes it worse: one emoji reads as two characters, so a bio that fits looks over budget and gets cut for nothing.
• Skin tone and profession emoji are worse again, several code points for one character, and this page counts the reader's version of them.
• Spaces are characters too. A six word bio spends five of its eighty on the gaps between the words.

When caption length stops mattering

Caption length is not TikTok's real constraint, and pretending otherwise wastes an afternoon. The platform hands you more caption than anyone reads and then takes most of it back with the interface.

• Count the bio. It is the one field where the number changes the sentence.
• For captions, write the first line for what shows over the video and let the rest run.
• A caption stuffed to the ceiling with hashtags is a formatting habit rather than a reach strategy, and no counter will tell you which it is.
• If the caption is carrying the whole point, the video is not carrying it.