YouTube end screens: the exact rules, and what they are worth
Three published numbers decide whether you can have an end screen at all. Here they are precisely, plus the devices where end screens never appear and the ranking claim YouTube has never made.
7 minute read
Three numbers decide whether you get one at all
YouTube publishes three hard constraints and they are worth memorising before you plan an outro. Your video has to run at least 25 seconds to have an end screen. The end screen itself can only be placed in the last 5 to 20 seconds of the video. And you can add up to four elements on a standard 16:9 video, with YouTube noting that other aspect ratios may have a lower limit. Those numbers interact in a way nobody mentions: on a 30-second video, a full-length end screen swallows two thirds of the runtime. The 25-second floor tells you the feature is technically allowed there. It does not mean it belongs there.
What can go in the four slots
Five element types exist. A video or playlist, a subscribe button for your own channel, a promotion of another channel with a custom message, and, if you are in the YouTube Partner Programme, a link to an external website. The video element is the one with hidden depth, because it offers three modes: feature your most recent upload, let YouTube pick the video from your channel that best suits the viewer, or choose any specific public or unlisted video or playlist, from your channel or someone else's. Most creators hand-pick, which is correct in publishing week and wrong eighteen months later. The viewer-matched option is the one that ages well on an evergreen video, and it costs nothing to set.
The places end screens simply do not appear
This is the part that changes how much effort the feature deserves. YouTube lists where end screens do not show: mobile web, with the exception of iPad, the YouTube Music app, the YouTube Kids app, Flash videos, 360 videos, and anything you have set as made for kids. Viewers can also hide end screens while watching. And YouTube adds a caveat most creators never read, which is that your end screen may not always show, or may show differently than you designed it, because it keeps adjusting the presentation based on performance, viewer behaviour, device and context. The layout you drag into position is a request, not a guarantee.
You are spending the last twenty seconds of the video
YouTube's own advice is to leave enough space and time for an end screen and to consider the last 20 seconds while you are editing. In practice almost nobody does. The usual sequence is finishing the edit, uploading, then bolting an end screen over whatever happened to be there, which is often you still talking. That produces the worst version of the feature: cards obscuring your face, competing with your closing line, arriving at exactly the point in the video where retention is already at its lowest. If you want end screens to work, they have to be a decision in the edit, with a designed shot underneath them and your voice pointing at what you want clicked.
What creator advice claims, and what YouTube documents
The standard claim is that end screens raise session watch time and therefore help you rank. Be careful with that one. YouTube's search and discovery guidance names average view duration, average percentage viewed, likes and post-watch survey results as the signals that inform ranking. End screens do not appear on that page at all. The mechanism creators describe is plausible enough, since a viewer who clicks through to a second video obviously watched more, but the ranking effect is inferred by creators rather than documented by YouTube. What YouTube actually documents is much narrower and still useful: an end screen gives a viewer who is already finishing somewhere specific to go next.
The one number you can genuinely check
YouTube reports end screen performance in the Engagement tab of Analytics. The headline metric is end screen element click rate, which is the ratio of end screen element clicks to end screen element impressions, and alongside it you get top end screen element types and top videos by end screen. That is enough to settle arguments on your own channel rather than by reading opinions. Compare click rate between a subscribe element and a video element, or between hand-picked and viewer-matched videos, over a decent number of uploads. Treat single videos with small impression counts as noise, the same way you would with click-through rate on a thumbnail.
Cards are the other half, and they behave differently
Cards are the feature people confuse with end screens, and the difference is timing. Cards can appear anywhere in the video, feature a video, playlist, channel or link, and again only Partner Programme members get external links. End screens only exist in that final window. The two also interact: YouTube suppresses card teasers and the video watermark while the end screen is showing, so you cannot stack every interactive element into the same ten seconds and expect all of them to render. Neither cards nor end screens are available on videos set as made for kids. If you want to point at something in the middle of a video, that is a card, not an end screen.
Give the end screen something worth pointing at
The weak link in most end screens is not the layout, it is the destination. A channel with a deep run of related videos always has an obvious next thing to offer, and the click rate reflects that. A channel posting unrelated one-offs is really just asking people to gamble. That is the case for building a back catalogue on a theme before optimising the last twenty seconds of anything, and for making publishing cheap enough to sustain. Recording once and cutting several genuinely self-contained pieces out of it, which is what a tool like FrameOS is for, is the least painful way to get there. Fix the destination first, then the element layout is a ten-minute job.
FAQ
How long does a YouTube video have to be for an end screen?
At least 25 seconds. That is YouTube's published minimum, and the end screen can only be placed in the last 5 to 20 seconds of the video. Since the maximum window is 20 seconds, an end screen on a video near the 25-second floor would cover most of it, so in practice the feature suits longer videos.
How many elements can you add to a YouTube end screen?
Up to four on a standard 16:9 video. YouTube notes that other aspect ratios may have a lower limit. Available element types are a video or playlist, a subscribe button, a promotion of another channel, and, for YouTube Partner Programme members, a link to an external website.
Why are my end screens not showing?
Often nothing is broken. YouTube says end screens do not appear on mobile web except iPad, in the YouTube Music or YouTube Kids apps, on Flash or 360 videos, or on anything set as made for kids. Viewers can hide them. YouTube also states that an end screen may not always show, or may show differently than designed, as it optimises for performance, device and context.
Do end screens help you rank on YouTube?
There is no documented ranking effect. YouTube's search and discovery guidance names average view duration, average percentage viewed, likes and post-watch survey results, and does not mention end screens. The popular claim that they raise session watch time and therefore rankings is an inference creators make, not something YouTube has published. What you can measure is end screen element click rate in the Engagement tab.
Sources
- Add end screens to videos - YouTube Help · YouTube Help
- Add info cards to videos - Computer - YouTube Help · YouTube Help
- Understand your YouTube engagement - Computer - YouTube Help · YouTube Help
- Search & discovery tips · YouTube Help
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