How do you make a YouTube Short?

Record a Short in the YouTube app

From YouTube Help and its getting-started page, read on 11 October 2026:

1. Sign in to the YouTube app, tap Create and choose Short.
2. Hold Capture, or tap it to start recording and again to stop. The upper-right corner changes the duration. The progress bar at the top shows how many segments you have recorded and how long each is.
3. When you finish recording, add music, filters or other effects. Undo removes the last clip and Redo brings it back.
4. Tap Done to preview, add sounds, text-to-speech and other effects, or go Back to the record screen.
5. Tap Next and add a title of up to 100 characters and settings such as privacy. Show more has the rest.
6. Choose whether the video is made for kids, then tap Upload Short, or Save draft to finish later.

The Shorts camera isn’t available on tablets. Drafts are kept on the device, not on your channel, so deleting the app or replacing the phone loses them; there is no limit on how many you keep.

Upload a video you already have

From YouTube’s page on uploading Shorts:

• On a computer. Sign in to YouTube Studio, click Create, then Upload videos, and pick a file of up to 3 minutes with a square or vertical aspect ratio. You can choose up to 15 at a time; click Edit draft to complete each one’s details before publishing.
• In the app. Tap Create, then Upload a video, and pick a square or vertical video. Up to 3 minutes shows a trim editor. For a longer one, tap Edit into a Short to trim it to 3 minutes or less.

YouTube allows a maximum resolution of 1080p for a Short you upload.

Make a Short from a video on your channel

From YouTube’s page on Shorts from your videos:

1. Open the watch page of a public long-form video you uploaded.
2. Tap Remix, then Edit into a Short.
3. Select up to 60 seconds of it and tap Next to add text or filters.

You can’t use the Audio Library on a Short made this way. If you select less than 60 seconds you can record more with the Shorts camera to fill the rest. Private and unlisted videos, and videos with third-party copyright claims, don’t offer the option; neither do public videos that haven’t allowed sampling, under Shorts remixing in YouTube Studio.

What counts as a Short

Two rows come from pages that don’t agree. On music, the recording page speaks of up to 90 seconds when you use YouTube’s tools and the upload page of 15-second clips for a video you bring in. On claims, the pages give opposite answers and we can’t tell which is newer. How long can a YouTube Short be has the length rules in full, and the free video checker tests a file’s length and shape against them in your browser.

How a Short reaches viewers

YouTube’s getting-started page says viewers find Shorts by tapping Shorts at the bottom of the app and scrolling the Shorts feed, and also in search results, on the home page, on a channel’s homepage, in their subscriptions and in notifications. Since 31 March 2025 a Shorts view counts each time a Short starts or replays, with no minimum watch time; YouTube keeps the older measure as “engaged views”.

Publishing Shorts with Mellow Hub

Hub doesn’t record or edit: it publishes a finished file. YouTube’s own camera and editor are the place to make one. For a file you already have, Hub uploads it to YouTube with a required title of up to 100 characters. Exactly one video, including landscape. YouTube classifies eligible square or vertical videos up to three minutes as Shorts; there is no separate Shorts endpoint. The same file can go to Instagram and TikTok in the same post. Scheduling a Short is covered in can you schedule YouTube Shorts.

After the video is made, the cover and the title are the next job. Mellow Hub, whose answer this is, has a YouTube packaging guide, an AI YouTube thumbnail generator that spends credits, and a free YouTube thumbnail tester.

The first 3 posts are free, however many networks each one goes to, and need no card. After that Hub is paid: plans start at $19 a month (Solo), after a 7-day trial with a card on file that costs nothing if you cancel before it ends, and a monthly plan's first month is 20% off. Publishing is unlimited on every plan, under a fair-use ceiling that stops automated floods (900 publications a month on Solo), where one publication is one post on one account, so a post sent to five networks counts as five toward it. There are no automatic overage charges.