What Are YouTube Clips? The 2026 Guide to Clips, Timestamps and Video Clips

TL;DR

• YouTube Clips let viewers cut a 5–60 second segment from an existing video or live stream and share it with a link back to the source.
• As of April 2026, YouTube has retired the ability to create new Clips; every Clip made before that date is still viewable, but the "Clip" button is gone from the share menu.
• In its place, YouTube pushed Share at Timestamp, a link that opens a video at a specific moment, now available on desktop and mobile.
• Separately, YouTube Studio still runs its own Video Clips tool, which lets creators (not viewers) cut a segment from their own long-form video or archived stream and republish it as a standalone video, complete with its own title, thumbnail, and description.
• YouTube has said it plans to extend Video Clips to Shorts and add AI-suggested "clippable" moments later in 2026, though no release date has been confirmed.

What Was YouTube Clips

Let's start with a definition. YouTube Clips was a built-in feature that let a viewer take a short-form fragment, between 5 and 60 seconds, from a video or live stream already published on a channel, and share that fragment through social networks, text messages, or email. Unlike YouTube Shorts, which a creator uploads as its own vertical video, a Clip was cut from content that already existed on the channel, and it always played back on a loop from the original video's watch page rather than living as a separate upload.

The word "was" matters here. As you'll see in the next section, viewers can no longer create new Clips, though the ones already made before the change are still live and watchable. For channels that run an archive as a 24/7 live stream through a tool like Gyre, that distinction is worth knowing: any Clips a viewer made from an earlier broadcast will keep working, even though nobody can cut a fresh one from today's stream.

The April 2026 Change: YouTube Retired Viewer-Created Clips

According to YouTube's Help Center, starting in April 2026, sharing a video at a specific timestamp took over the role that creating a new Clip used to play, and the change was confirmed directly in YouTube's support documentation for the feature. Reporting from outlets including 9to5Google and Android Authority traced the announcement to a YouTube Help Community post published on April 17, 2026, in which a member of the TeamYouTube staff described the shift as a simplification of the share menu rather than a removal of clip-style content altogether.

Here's what actually changed and what didn't:

• Gone: the ability for a viewer to select a new 5–60 second segment, give it a custom title (up to 140 characters), and publish it as a new Clip.
• Unchanged: every Clip created before the cutoff remains playable by anyone with the link, and creators can still find Clips made from their videos in their Clips library inside YouTube Studio.
• New: Share at Timestamp, which opens a video starting at a chosen moment but without a defined end point or custom title. It works closer to a deep link than an edited fragment.

YouTube framed the retirement as a response to the number of third-party clipping tools already available, and it comes alongside a separate, ongoing crackdown on "clipping farms" that paid people to re-upload creator footage as their own Clips for engagement farming. Neither of those factors changes anything about how the rest of this article applies to you as a creator, but they explain why the feature disappeared rather than simply moving.

Share at Timestamp: The Viewer-Facing Replacement

Share at Timestamp isn't new technology. Timestamp links have existed on desktop for years, but 2026 is the first time it's been rolled out consistently to the mobile apps and positioned as the primary way to point someone to a specific moment.

• On mobile: tap Share under the video's progress bar, then toggle the timestamp option. The current playback position is appended to the link automatically; there's no field to type in an exact moment other than scrubbing to it first.
• On desktop: the Share panel below the video includes a "Start at" checkbox where you can type a timestamp manually (for example, 2:30) before copying the link or generating an embed code, and the embed carries the start time into the player as well.

The trade-off is real: a Share at Timestamp link opens the full video starting at a chosen point, but it has no defined end point, no custom title, and no separate URL the way a Clip did. For a deeper look at using timestamps to structure a video from the creator's side, our guide on adding YouTube chapters covers how the same timestamp mechanic works when you set it up yourself rather than leaving it to a viewer.

Video Clips in YouTube Studio: The Creator-Side Tool

This is the part of "Clips" that's easiest to confuse with the retired feature, but it's a separate tool aimed at creators, not viewers, and it's been available in YouTube Studio independently of the April 2026 change. It lets a creator cut a segment out of their own long-form video or an archived live stream and publish it as a new, standalone video, with its own title, description, and thumbnail, rather than a viewer-generated fragment tied to the original.

To use it, a creator opens an existing video in YouTube Studio, selects Clips, and chooses "Create video clip." The tool offers three ways to pick the segment: selecting text directly from the auto-generated transcript, clicking individual words in the transcript to mark a start and end point, or entering timestamps manually on the timeline. The transcript used is the same one generated for auto-captions, so cleaning up captions beforehand makes the clip-selection process easier to work with.

If your channel runs on a Gyre-powered 24/7 stream built from a video archive, this is the tool worth building into your workflow: pull the strongest moment from an archived broadcast, republish it as its own video with a fresh title and thumbnail, and let that new upload point traffic back to the full stream, all without touching a third-party editor. Our walkthrough of editing inside YouTube Studio goes further into the editor tools available alongside Clips.

YouTube has said it's working on two extensions to this tool for later in 2026: bringing Video Clips to Shorts directly, and adding AI-generated suggestions that flag a video's most "clippable" moments automatically. Neither has a confirmed release date as of this writing.

Clips vs. Share at Timestamp vs. Video Clips vs. Shorts

How Creators Can Use These Tools to Grow a Channel

With the viewer-facing Clip button gone, the growth playbook shifts toward tools the creator controls directly:

• Build teasers from long-form videos. Use the Video Clips tool in Studio to pull a strong 30–60 second moment from a new upload and republish it as a standalone video the same day, giving the algorithm a second entry point into the same content.
• Re-surface archived streams and webinars. If your channel keeps older streams live around the clock through a service like Gyre, use Video Clips to cut a highlight from that archive and publish it separately. It works as a fresh piece of content while pointing viewers back to the full broadcast.
• Give new visitors a fast way in. A short, well-titled clip republished from your best long-form video gives someone unfamiliar with your channel a lower-commitment way to sample your content before watching a full episode.
• Turn support answers into reusable assets. A Video Clip built around the exact segment where you explain a product feature or answer a recurring question can be linked directly to customers instead of the full video.
• Pick up extra visibility in Search. Because a republished Video Clip is its own video with its own metadata, it can rank separately from the source video for related queries, something a viewer-made Clip's shared URL couldn't do in the same way.

Can These Clips Be Monetized?

The two tools behave differently here. A legacy viewer-made Clip was never a separate monetized asset: it played back from the original video's watch page, so any ad revenue and watch time it generated stayed attributed to that original upload, not to the Clip itself. That's still true for any old Clips still being watched today.

A Video Clip published through YouTube Studio is different, because it's republished as a genuinely new, standalone video. That means it follows the same monetization rules as any other upload on a channel already in the YouTube Partner Program: it needs to meet YouTube's usual ad-suitability guidelines to run ads, and features like mid-roll ads still depend on the video's own length and structure rather than on the source video it was cut from. If your channel isn't yet in the Partner Program, republishing clips won't unlock monetization on its own; the underlying eligibility requirements (subscribers, watch hours, and content originality standards) still apply to the channel as a whole.

Key Takeaways

• Stop building any workflow around viewers clipping your videos for you. That distribution channel is closed, so any promotion plan that leaned on it needs a replacement.
• Move the clipping responsibility in-house. Video Clips in Studio puts the same "cut a highlight, republish it" mechanic in your hands instead of leaving it to chance, and it comes with SEO upside a shared Clip link never had, since each republished clip is its own indexable video.
• Timestamp links are worth teaching your audience about directly. Since Share at Timestamp has no custom title or defined end point, a pinned comment or description note telling viewers how to jump to a key moment does work a Clip used to do automatically.
• If you run an archive as a 24/7 stream, treat Video Clips as part of your content pipeline, not an afterthought. Pulling highlights from that archive on a regular cadence gives the algorithm fresh, separately rankable entry points without any new filming.
• Watch for the Shorts integration and AI "clippable" suggestions YouTube has previewed for later in 2026. When those ship, they'll likely shift the effort/reward balance of clipping again, so it's worth checking YouTube's Help Center periodically rather than assuming today's workflow is final.

FAQ

Can I still create a YouTube Clip?

No. Since April 2026, YouTube has removed the ability for viewers to create new Clips. Any Clips made before that change are still viewable by anyone with the link, but the "Clip" option no longer appears in the share menu.

What replaced the Clips feature?

Share at Timestamp. It lets anyone share a video starting from a specific moment, on both desktop and mobile, but it opens the full video rather than a defined short segment, and it doesn't support a custom title the way a Clip did.

Is Video Clips in YouTube Studio the same thing as the old Clips feature?

No, and this is the most common point of confusion. Video Clips in Studio is a creator-only tool for cutting a segment from your own long-form video or archived live stream and republishing it as a new, standalone video. It's separate from the viewer-facing Clips feature that was retired, and it's still active.

How long can a YouTube Clip be?

Legacy Clips (the ones still viewable from before April 2026) run between 5 and 60 seconds. Video Clips created through Studio can run to whatever length you choose when cutting the segment from your source video.

Do Clips or Video Clips help a channel grow?

A republished Video Clip acts as a second, separately discoverable video built from content you already have, which can bring in viewers who wouldn't have found the original upload. Legacy viewer-made Clips worked the same way: they credited and linked back to the source video, extending its reach without splitting off its ad revenue.