[FAQ]

I’m trying to improve the listener experience for my podcast by adding chapters to the episode descriptions. I have seen other podcasts on Spotify where you can click on a time in the description and it jumps you straight to that point in the episode.

I have tried writing out the times in my show notes, but they just appear as plain text. For example, I’ll write “14:30 The Main Discussion”, but it isn’t clickable.

Could someone please advise on the exact formatting required to make these timestamps work correctly within Spotify?

Many thanks.

[Jeff Bullas]

That’s a great feature to be using.

Short Answer: To create clickable timestamps in Spotify, you must format them in your episode description by starting the line with the time in (MM:SS) or (HH:MM:SS) format, followed by the chapter title.

Using this simple text format correctly is fundamental to making your audio content more navigable and professional.

The key is to input this information into the episode description field on your podcast hosting platform, not directly on Spotify. For each chapter, you start a new line with the time in parentheses. For example, (00:00) Introduction or (08:15) Main Interview Starts or (01:12:30) Final Thoughts. It’s crucial that minutes and seconds always have two digits, so use 08 instead of 8. Spotify and other modern podcast apps will automatically recognise this format and make the timestamps clickable.

Strategically, this small bit of text formatting has a big impact on your audio content. It adds a visual structure to your episode, allowing listeners to see what’s being discussed and jump to the sections most relevant to them. This improves the user experience, which can increase engagement and total listening time.

This practice also streamlines your ability to repurpose content for video. The same timestamped outline you create for your podcast can be copied directly into the description of a YouTube video to create chapters there. This makes it incredibly simple to identify and export compelling segments from your main recording to use as short video clips for social media promotion.

Cheers,
Jeff

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