Writing bios that don't get truncated
The single most common social-media mistake in 2026 is writing bios and post copy in an editor that doesn't show the platform's cutoff. Instagram silently truncates captions after ~125 characters in the feed preview. X shows only the first line before "Show more". LinkedIn cuts your headline mid-word if it exceeds 220 chars. This tool prevents all of that.
Why emojis need special counting
Emojis are multi-byte Unicode sequences — a single 👨👩👧👦 family emoji is 7 UTF-16 code units. Naive counters flag it as 7 characters; social platforms count it as 1 grapheme cluster. This tool uses Intl.Segmenter to count exactly what the platform will count.
Bio best practices per platform
- Instagram (150) — lead with your value prop, one keyword, one CTA. Line breaks work.
- X (160) — pack keywords for search. Emojis reduce space; use sparingly.
- TikTok (80) — hardest limit. Skip articles, use symbols: "→", "|", "·".
- LinkedIn headline (220) — role · unique value · one keyword recruiters search.
- YouTube description (5000) — first 157 chars appear in search snippets. Put the hook there.
SMS segment limits
Standard SMS is 160 GSM-7 characters per segment. Adding a single emoji switches encoding to UCS-2 and the limit drops to 70 chars per segment — meaning a 71-character emoji message costs 2 segments. If you're sending campaign SMS through virtual numbers, that doubles your cost. Watch the "SMS" row in the sidebar.