What happened to YouTube annotations?

YouTube annotations were discontinued and removed. YouTube stopped letting creators add new annotations in 2017, then fully removed existing annotations from videos in January 2019.

The main reason was that annotations were built for the old desktop web experience and did not work well on mobile, where most viewing had shifted. YouTube replaced their main functions with mobile-friendly tools such as Cards and End Screens, which let creators link to videos, playlists, channels, websites, and prompts in a way that works across devices.

So if you’re watching an older video that says “click the annotation,” that clickable pop-up no longer exists; the creator would need to update the video description, cards, or end screen instead.