Creators! It was only last year that YouTube debuted branding intros—a new feature that allowed you to tack on three-second intros at the beginning of your videos. Many creators have used these intros to brand their videos, remind their viewers to like and subscribe, and announce new projects they’re launching.

However, YouTube has recently posted an alert saying that they’re discontinuing the branding intros feature at the end of March.

What this means for you

After March 31, you’ll no longer be able to add, update, or remove a branding intro from your videos. YouTube has given you two options for how to handle this change: you can either burn your current intro permanently into your videos, or you can remove it entirely.

Keep current branding intro will burn your current three-second branding intro to the beginning of all videos that you uploaded before March 31. After March 31, you will not be able to easily remove it like you can now, and future videos will not receive an intro.

will burn your current three-second branding intro to the beginning of all videos that you uploaded before March 31. After March 31, you will not be able to easily remove it like you can now, and future videos will not receive an intro. Remove branding intro will delete the three-second intro from all of your videos after March 31.

Which should you choose?

The decision will be different for every creator. If you feel that your branding is unlikely to change, or you’d like to continue encouraging your viewers to subscribe, then you may want to keep the intro intact. But if your current intro refers to content that may not exist in its current form in a few months, you may want to remove the intro on March 31.

Choose carefully, because if you decide to keep your current branding intro, it’ll be difficult to remove it after March 31. There’s only one exception: if a video of yours has less than 100,000 views, YouTube allows you to trim that video using the Enhancements feature (found in the dropdown under each video).

After March 31, once the branding intros are part of your videos, you’ll be able to use the Enhancements feature to trim off the three-second intro on a video-by-video basis (as long as the desired video has less than 100,000 views).

Act quickly!

March 31 is just around the corner! If you have an existing branding intro, head on over to the Branding section to make your decision on whether to keep it or not. If you don’t make any selection by March 31, YouTube will remove your intro by default.

If you haven’t added a branding intro yet and you do want to brand your existing videos permanently, you have until March 31 to add an intro. You can check out our announcement blog post for instructions. Once enabled, make sure to choose the “Keep current branding intro” option.

Good luck with your videos, and let us know if you have any questions!