How to Share Links to Specific Times in a YouTube Video
So, you just finished creating your brand new video for YouTube, but one of your major concerns is that it’s a long video during which you touch on multiple key points of discussion. While you have faith in your existing subscribers to bear with you through the entire length of the video, you don’t really know if new viewers (and potentially new subscribers) would like to bear with you for that long.
Viewers who do not know you well enough may not be very patient, and typically, they’d want you to cut to the chase. So, what do you do to shake off that concern?
The answer lies in knowing how to share links to specific times in your video. It’s one of the most effective tricks right now for content creators on YouTube, particularly the ones who create long and elaborate videos. So, without any more delays, let’s get right into it!
Sharing links from a PC
- Open the YouTube video link that you want to share from any web browser on your PC.
- See the ‘Share’ button beneath your video? Click on it. A box should pop up right after you click it.
- In the box, you should see the ‘Start at’ option at the bottom that has an unchecked box to its immediate left. Check the box.
- Mention the exact time at which you want your video to start in the space provided to the right of the ‘Start at’ option.
- As soon as you mention the time, you will be able to see some changes in the original video link that was in the popup box just above the ‘Start at’ option. The link is now what is known as a ‘timestamped URL.’
- Press the ‘Copy’ button beside the timestamped URL and paste the link across all your social media platforms. Those who click on the link should be able to watch the video starting from the time you specified.
Alternatively, you could also start watching the video if you don’t remember the exact time that kicks off a particular segment. When you get to the start of the segment you want to share, click on the ‘Share’ button, and in this scenario, you should see that the ‘Start at’ option in the popup box already has the time mentioned.
Sharing links from mobile devices
Unfortunately, the YouTube app across Android and iOS devices does not support the sharing of timestamped URLs. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t share links to specified times in your YouTube video from your mobile devices. Instead of opening the app, simply visit the desktop version of the site from any browser on your mobile device and follow all the steps that you would for a PC.
However, remember to visit the desktop version of the site and not the mobile version, as, like the app, the mobile version of the website does not support timestamped URL sharing.
There is also a manual method to share timestamped URLs, and while it’s the most rarely used method by YouTube users, there’s no harm in learning it, right? To go the manual way, here’s what you need to do:
- Look at the URL mentioned above the ‘Start At’ option in the popup box that appears after you click ‘Share.’ If it already has a question mark at its end, add ‘&t=00m00s’ without the quotes. Instead of ‘00m00s’ mention the exact time at which you want the video to begin. For example, if you want it to begin at the 4:20 mark, you’d need to add ‘&t=04m20s’ to the URL. Copy and paste the manually-created timestamped URL.
- If the URL doesn’t have a question mark at the end, add ‘?t=00m00s’ to it without the quotes and similar to the previous point, replace ‘00m00s’ with the exact time you want the video to start at.
There you have it; all the ways of sharing timestamped URLs on YouTube across all your PCs and mobile devices!
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