If you’d like to share a portion of a YouTube video with someone, you don’t have to share the full video. We’ll show you how to make clips of full YouTube videos on your Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone, and iPad devices.
What Is YouTube’s “Clips” Feature?
With YouTube’s Clips feature, you can make a short clip out of a full YouTube video by choosing what portion of the video you want to include in your clip. You’ll get a shareable web address so that you can share the clip with anyone you want. YouTube offers the clip creation feature on both its website and mobile apps.
There are some limitations to Clips, though:
To create a clip, you must be signed in to your YouTube (Google account). You can’t make clips of videos made for kids, livestreams without DVR, livestreams over eight hours long, and premiers while they’re still live. The minimum duration for a clip is five seconds, and the maximum duration is 60 seconds. You can watch a clip without being signed in to a YouTube (Google) account. The video clip will play in a loop.
At the time of this writing (June 2021), Clips is only available for certain YouTube channels. If you don’t see this option for a channel, that channel has yet to get the feature.
How to Create a Clip on the YouTube Website
To get started, first, open the YouTube site in a web browser on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. Then, find and click the video that you want to make a clip from.
On the video page that opens, play the video to the point where you’d like your clip to start. Feel free to fast-forward the video to get to that point quickly.
On the same page, beneath the video title, click the “Clip” option.
A “Create Clip” panel will open on the right side of the YouTube page.
In this panel, click the “Add a Title” box and enter a name for your clip. Then, drag the slider so that it covers the part of the video that you want in your clip. Finally, at the bottom of the panel, click “Share Clip.”
YouTube will open a small “Share” box. In this box, click “Copy” to copy the web address to your newly created clip. Or, you can click a social site icon if you’d like to share the clip directly on that site.
You can now share the copied URL with anyone you want.
To watch the clip for yourself, paste the clip’s URL in your web browser and hit Enter. Your clip will start playing.
And that’s how you quickly share a certain part of a full YouTube video from the web.
Make a Clip Out of a YouTube Video on Android, iPhone, or iPad
On an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone, you can use the official YouTube app to create clips. To get started, open the YouTube app. On the app’s first screen, find and tap the video that you want to make a clip from.
On the video play page that opens, tap “Clip” beneath the video title.
YouTube will open a “Create Clip” panel beneath the video.
In this panel, tap “Add a Title” and type a name for your clip. Then, drag the sliders to select the portion of the video that you want in your clip. Lastly, tap “Share Clip” at the bottom of the panel.
Your phone’s “Share” menu will now open. Here, tap “Copy Link” to copy the link to your newly made YouTube clip. You can also tap an icon in this menu to share your clip with that app directly.
To check out the clip for yourself, paste the clip’s web address into your mobile web browser, hit Enter, and the clip will start playing.
That’s it! Repeat it as often as you like. And if you’d rather share a YouTube video from a certain point, there’s a way to do that, too.
RELATED: How to Share YouTube Videos Starting at a Certain Point
