Reviewing and applying candidates

A candidate is a proposed new title (and sometimes a new thumbnail) for one of your videos. Candidates appear in the Candidates section on your dashboard, with the full review queue on the Review page.

Reading a candidate

Each card shows your current title and the proposed title beneath it. One option is marked recommended. Click "more options" to see the alternatives.

Approve, edit, reject

• Approve records your go-ahead. It does not change anything on YouTube yet.
• Edit lets you rewrite the proposed title inline before approving. Titles are limited to 100 characters.
• Reject dismisses the candidate. The card reads "Dismissed — we won't change this video," and you can undo it.

On the Review page you can move through the queue from the keyboard: A approves the selected candidate, S skips to the next one, and R rejects it. The rail on the left shows every pending video and crosses off the ones you have handled. A video Uptides has optimized before shows a green "Last optimized" date on its rail row and beside its publish date on the card, so you can tell a re-optimization from a first-time proposal at a glance; a first-time video shows no such date.

Apply to YouTube

After approving, the card shows "Approved" with an Apply to YouTube button and an Undo. Apply opens a dialog where you choose what to apply: the new title, the new thumbnail, or both. You can also turn on Auto Mode for the video from this dialog. By clicking "Apply to YouTube," you certify that the content complies with the YouTube Terms of Service. The change is made on YouTube right away, and you can revert it later.

The Review page is a focused sweep with its own top bar. Once you have at least one approved candidate, the bar shows "not live yet" beside an Apply N now button, where N is how many approvals are waiting. You don't have to finish the whole queue first — press it at any point to open the choose-what-to-apply dialog for every approved video at once and push that batch live in one step. A thin progress line under the bar fills as you decide each video.

Done in the bar (or the Escape key) takes you back to the dashboard. If you still have approvals that haven't been applied, Uptides asks first — they stay approved and you can apply them later, but nothing changes on YouTube until you do.

When you have decided every video, the sweep ends on a ready screen: "N titles are ready to go live." Nothing has changed on YouTube yet. The screen lists each approved video with what will change (title, thumbnail, or both) so you can untick anything before the push, and one button — Apply N to YouTube — makes the changes live. If a video can't be applied, it stays on the list with the reason and the button becomes Retry. Choosing Not now returns you to the dashboard with your approvals kept, but nothing improves until they are live.

After the push you'll see Live on YouTube with a count of titles and thumbnails updated. Damage control watches each change from that night.

Below the rail, Approve all remaining (N) approves every video still waiting in one click. Approving records your decision only; nothing changes on YouTube until you apply. A note beside the button reminds you that every change is watched and anything that underperforms its own history is reverted automatically. If auto-revert is off for the channel, the note says so and links to Settings.

Statuses you will see

On the Videos page each video carries a badge such as In review, Optimized, Not optimized, Do not optimize, or Eligible. Reasons a video is not a candidate yet include "Too new," "Too few views," "Growing fast," "Not enough data," and "Recently optimized." On Reports, optimized videos show one of Stable, Improving, or Declining, and a video whose title was rolled back is Protected.

Shorts

Your Shorts are reviewed in the same queue, on their own tab. The Long-form and Shorts tabs sit above the rail on the Review page, and each carries a count of how many videos are waiting behind it, so you can see whether the other queue needs attention without switching. You can also use the Review shorts → link that appears on your dashboard once your long-form queue is clear.

A recommendation for a Short usually ends up shorter than your original and names a single thing plainly rather than building suspense.

When the queue is empty

• "Generating new candidates… this usually takes a few minutes. They'll appear here automatically."
• "All eligible videos have been optimized. Check back tomorrow for new candidates."
• "You've reviewed all current candidates. Load more when you're ready to optimize more videos."

Skipping a video

In the sweep, Skip (or the S key) sets a video aside for now: it dims in the list as "Skipped for now" and comes back in your next sweep. You can click it again to decide it today. This is different from Skip Optimization below, which is permanent.

Choose Skip Optimization on a video you never want Uptides to touch. It moves to "Do not optimize" and no candidates are generated for it.