How to Pin and Heart YouTube Comments in 2026

Pinning and hearting are the two smallest buttons in your comment section and two of the highest-leverage. A pin controls the very first thing every viewer reads; a heart tells a fan you saw them and quietly boosts that comment for everyone else. This guide walks through exactly how to do both on desktop, mobile, and Shorts in 2026, straight from YouTube's own Help docs, and where they stop being enough. If your section moves faster than you can keep up, our comment moderation guide covers the automated side.

Short answer. To pin a YouTube comment, click the three-dot More menu on any comment (yours or a fan's), choose Pin, and confirm. Only one comment can be pinned per video. To heart, tap the heart icon beside the thumbs. Both require your channel's advanced features to be on. CommentShark handles the replying and moderation around them.

How to pin a comment on YouTube (desktop)

On a computer, a pinned comment sits at the very top of the watch page with a "Pinned by" label and your channel name. Here is the exact flow YouTube documents:

• Sign in to YouTube on the channel that owns the video.
• Scroll to the comments and find the one you want to feature. It can be your own comment or a fan's.
• Hover over the comment and click the three-dot More menu on the right.
• Click Pin, then click PIN again to confirm.
• The comment jumps to the top with a "Pinned by [your channel]" badge.

You can only have one pinned comment per video at a time. Pinning a new comment automatically replaces the old one, so treat the pin as a single, rotating slot rather than a list.

How to pin a comment on mobile (iOS and Android)

The steps are identical in the YouTube app: open the comments, tap the three-dot menu on the target comment, and tap Pin. The one difference is on the viewer side. YouTube notes that on mobile, viewers must expand the comment section to see the pinned comment, whereas on desktop it shows at the top of the watch page automatically. That is worth remembering, because most YouTube watch time is mobile, so a pinned link or instruction is only seen by people who actually open comments.

Do you need verification to pin comments?

Yes, indirectly. YouTube's Help center states plainly that "to pin comments, you must allow access to advanced features on your channel." Advanced features (which also include higher upload limits and Community posts) require, at minimum, phone verification, plus either enough channel history or ID/video verification. YouTube also warns that once advanced features are turned on, they "may take up to 24 hours" to appear across your channel. So if the Pin option is missing, the fix is almost always in Settings, not the comment itself: confirm advanced features are enabled and wait out that window.

How to unpin a comment

• Open the three-dot More menu on the currently pinned comment.
• Select Unpin.
• The comment moves back to its original position in the timeline. Per YouTube, you can unpin at any time.

There is no separate "repin" history. To swap pins, just pin a different comment and the old one un-pins itself.

Pin comment on YouTube Shorts

Pinning works on Shorts exactly like it does on long-form video. Open the Short, tap to open its comments, find the comment, tap the three-dot menu, and tap Pin. The same one-pin-per-video rule applies. Shorts are where a pin earns its keep: viewers swipe fast, so a pinned comment is often the only supporting context they will read, whether that is a follow-up question, a correction, or a prompt to check the description. Keep it short enough to absorb in the second or two before the next swipe.

Can you pin a comment with a link?

You pin a comment, not a link directly, so yes: if a comment contains a URL, pinning that comment pins the link along with it. Many creators post their own comment with a resource, product, or newsletter link and pin it as a soft call to action. Two honest caveats. First, links inside comments are not always clickable for every viewer and can be caught by YouTube's spam filtering, especially on new channels. Second, a raw link in a pin can read as promotional and depress replies. A pinned question almost always drives more engagement than a pinned link, so if you use a link, wrap it in a reason to click.

How to heart comments on YouTube

Hearting is the lighter-weight signal. Only the channel owner can heart a comment on their own videos. To do it, click or tap the heart icon that sits next to the thumbs up and thumbs down on any comment. That is the whole action. Once hearted, your channel's profile picture and a small red heart appear in the lower-left corner of the comment, and the commenter gets a notification that the creator "loves your comment." It is the fastest way to acknowledge dozens of people without typing a single reply.

Is there a way to heart all comments at once?

In the main YouTube app and on the web, no: you heart one comment at a time. But in 2026, the YouTube Studio mobile app added a "Suggested comments to heart" tool. YouTube describes it as giving creators "the option to heart recent, 'heart-worthy' comments identified to have positive intent," with an Add hearts to all action so you can batch-heart every suggestion in one tap, or heart them individually. Two limits to know: it is currently mobile-Studio only, and if you do not see it, YouTube says "there may not be enough comments to suggest." It is a curation tool, not a blanket heart-everything button, which is usually the smarter behavior anyway.

What does it mean when a YouTuber hearts your comment?

From the viewer's side, a creator heart is a genuine signal of acknowledgment. Because only the channel owner can give it, a heart means the person who made the video actually saw your comment and chose to mark it. It has practical effects too: a hearted comment gets a small visibility and credibility boost, and research has shown that a creator heart appearing soon after a video goes live can encourage more people to comment, lifting total engagement over time. It does not mean the creator agrees with you or will reply, it simply means "noticed and appreciated." For creators, that is exactly why it is worth using deliberately: it rewards the fans you want more of.

Pinning and hearting at scale: where the manual limit hits

Pins and hearts are per-comment, manual actions, and that is fine for one video a week. It falls apart across a back catalog of hundreds of videos and thousands of daily comments, where the real work is not the heart, it is finding which comments deserve one and which ones need a reply, a hide, or a delete. That is the gap CommentShark fills. It does not touch YouTube's native pin or heart buttons; it handles everything around them: AI auto-replies in your voice, spam and scam auto-moderation, and sentiment and intent tagging so the comments worth hearting surface to the top instead of drowning.

• Auto-reply by rules: keyword, regex, or AI-intent triggers, running autonomously or through an approval queue you review first.
• Voice-matched replies: trained on your past replies and channel context, so responses sound like you, not a bot.
• 24/7 auto-moderation: hide or delete spam and scams and enforce a blocked-words list with AI hate and scam filtering.
• Sentiment and intent tagging: see which comments are questions, praise, or buying signals so hearting and pinning become a two-minute triage.
• Free forever tier: 3 rules, 20 automated actions/mo, AI included, so you can try the workflow before paying.

If you just want to explore your section first, the comment searcher and sentiment insights tools are free and need no signup, a fast way to find the best comment to pin.

Frequently Asked Questions