Most published advice about Twitch tags tells you to pick five. That was the limit until August 2022, when Twitch doubled it to 10. If a guide still says five, it has not been updated in four years, which tells you something about the rest of it.
What tags actually do
Tags appear next to your thumbnail, title and category everywhere your stream is shown. Three documented mechanisms follow from that:
- Viewers filter the browse directory by tag.
- Searching a tag puts channels using it at the top of the results.
- Twitch uses tags to recommend streams to people who have watched similarly tagged ones.
All three put you in front of someone who is already looking for something specific. That is a smaller audience than the front page and a much better matched one.
The rules
Ten custom tags, plus an automatic one for your language. Each up to 25 characters, no spaces, which is why they are written in CamelCase like PlayingWithViewers.
How many to use
You will see "5 to 7 is optimal" repeated a lot. There is no evidence behind it that we can find, and we are not going to repeat it. What we will say is that Channel Check gives full credit at 7, on the reasoning that most channels using only three have simply not revisited the setting since the cap changed.
Accuracy matters more than count. A viewer who filtered to Cozy and found you wants a cozy stream. Tags that describe your stream honestly bring people who want it; tags chosen for traffic bring people who leave.
What to tag
Cover the game, how you play, and your language. Then the specifics that would make someone pick you over the channel above you: NoBackseating, Chill, SmallStreamer, FirstPlaythrough.
More on discovery settings in the Channel Optimization guide.