The two rules that make a video a Short
- 3 minutes or less. YouTube raised the limit from 60 seconds in October 2024.
- Square or vertical. A 9:16 vertical video fills the Shorts feed; a landscape video uploads as a regular video.
Short answer
Open YouTube Studio on your computer, click Create, then Upload videos, and pick a square or vertical video of 3 minutes or less. YouTube makes it a Short automatically.
How to upload a Short from your computer
That's it. As long as the video is 3 minutes or less and square or vertical, YouTube treats it as a Short. These steps come from YouTube's own help page.
- 1. Go to studio.youtube.com and sign in.
- 2. In the top-right corner, click Create, then Upload videos.
- 3. Choose your video file. You can select up to 15 at once.
- 4. Add a title and description. Keep the title short: on a phone, long titles get cut off.
- 5. Choose who can see it: publish now, keep it private, or set a date and time to schedule it.
If your video didn't become a Short
- It's landscape. Crop it to 9:16 (1080 by 1920) or square and upload it again.
- It's over 3 minutes. Trim it. Over 3 minutes, YouTube uploads it as a regular video.
- It's a long video you want to split. Cut the best 30 to 60 seconds into its own vertical clip; short clips are easier to watch to the end.
Post the same Short to TikTok and Reels
Disclosure: PersonaXpand is our product. Upload a vertical video once and it posts to YouTube as a Short, and to TikTok, Instagram Reels and Facebook, each with its own caption. It checks the length for every network before anything goes out. See the video length limits for every network.