How to link a YouTube Short to your long video

This is the route YouTube's help page gives, and the one that works for every channel with the feature:

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio on a computer.
2. Select Content in the left menu, and open the Shorts tab.
3. Click the Short you want to link (its title or thumbnail) to open its details.
4. Click Related video in the menu on the right side of the details page, and select the video from your channel that you want the Short to point to.
5. Click Save.

You can change it the same way later. There's one related video per Short, so choose the one a viewer of that Short is most likely to want. If you don't see the Related video setting at all, the likeliest reason is that your channel doesn't have advanced features yet (see what you can link below).

YouTube's page on editing video details lists Related video among the settings you can change on a Short, and gives two ways in on a phone:

• The YouTube Studio app: tap Content at the bottom, select the Short, tap Edit, set the related video and tap Save.
• The YouTube app: tap your profile picture, then Your videos at the bottom. Next to the Short, tap More (the three dots), then Edit. Set the related video and save.

While uploading: YouTube's help describes the related video as something you add after the Short is uploaded, and its steps for uploading a Short in the app (title, privacy, audience) don't include it. So upload the Short first, then edit it. If the setting doesn't show in your app, do it in YouTube Studio on a computer, where YouTube documents it step by step.

One shortcut links itself. In the YouTube app, a public long video of yours has a Remix button on its watch page: tap Remix, then Edit into a Short, select up to 60 seconds of the video, and finish the Short. YouTube says Shorts made this way are linked back to the original video. It only works on your own public long videos.

YouTube's help pages set out what the related video can be:

The video you pick also has to follow YouTube's Community Guidelines. An unlisted video works, which is handy for something you don't want in your channel's feed, like a launch video or a saved live stream made for one audience.

Advanced features. Adding a related video needs advanced feature access. To check yours, open YouTube Studio, then Settings, Channel, Feature eligibility. YouTube's rules for getting it:

1. Verify your phone number (Feature eligibility, Intermediate features, Verify phone number). That unlocks intermediate features.
2. Then build enough channel history, or verify your identity with a valid ID or a short video of your face. YouTube says most active channels already have enough history, and that ID or video review usually takes 24 hours. ID and video verification aren't available to every creator.

Only the channel's primary owner can verify. A Community Guidelines strike, copyright strikes or spam can delay or remove advanced features, and with them the related video.

In the Shorts player, the related video shows as a clickable link below your channel handle while the Short plays. A tap takes the viewer out of the Shorts feed and into the video you picked.

It matters because it's one of the few links a Short can carry. YouTube's list of clickable links says URLs in Shorts descriptions and Shorts comments aren't clickable (to cut spam and scams), while the related video link is. So “link in the description” does nothing for a Short: the related video is how a viewer gets from the Short to the full video in one tap.

Since the link sits low on the screen, near the handle and the title, keep your own captions and on-screen text above that area so nothing covers it or gets covered. The free safe zone checker shows what the Shorts player's buttons and text cover on your clip before you post it.

YouTube doesn't document a report of taps on the related video link. When it launched the feature in 2023, its Creator Liaison wrote that analytics on which related links drive views were coming, but YouTube's help pages today describe no such report, and its list of traffic sources doesn't name one for it. So measure it from the long video's side:

• The long video's Reach tab. In YouTube Studio, open the long video, then Analytics, then Reach. The “How viewers find this video” card splits its views by traffic source. Compare the weeks before and after you linked Shorts to it: if its views rose, look at which sources grew.
• Your channel's Subscribers report. In Analytics, the Content tab shows how many subscribers you gained from videos, Shorts, live streams and posts, which tells you whether your Shorts bring in viewers who stay.
• The Short's own engagement. Its Stayed to watch figure shows the share of viewers who watched past the first seconds. A Short people swipe away from sends nobody anywhere, so fix that first.

Watch hours. For the Partner Program, watch time on Shorts in the Shorts feed doesn't count toward the 4,000 hours, but watch time on your public long videos does, however the viewer got there. Hours on unlisted videos don't count, so if you're working toward monetization, link Shorts to public videos. The rest of the route is in how to get monetized on YouTube.

A related video works best when the Short is a piece of the video it links to. A viewer who liked 40 seconds of an interview is the likeliest person to want the whole interview. YouTube's own guide to growing long-form views with Shorts says to match the viewer's intent: a Short with a quick tip links to the full tutorial, a product Short to the full review. So for each long video:

1. Find three to five moments that stand alone: a tip, a strong opinion, a story, a question answered. Each should make sense without the rest and hint that there's more. What to look for is in how to find the best moments to clip.
2. Make each one a Short: vertical (9:16), under 3 minutes, framed on whoever's talking, with captions on every word. The steps by hand are in how to turn a YouTube video into Shorts.
3. Post them over the days after the long video, and set the long video as each one's related video. Every Short becomes another way into the same video.

YouTube says you won't be penalized for using your own content in a Short, and the two formats do different jobs: Shorts reach people who've never seen your channel, and long videos are where they watch for minutes and subscribe. The trade-offs are in YouTube Shorts vs long videos.

The slow part is the cutting. Finding the moments means watching the video again; then each one needs trimming to whole sentences, reframing from 16:9 to 9:16 on the speaker, and captions. Clyper does that part from the video's YouTube link (public or unlisted, 1 minute to 4 hours): it reads the transcript, picks moments that stand on their own, cuts each on whole sentences, gives it a hook score, frames it on the speaker and captions every word. You choose how many, up to one for every 2 minutes of video, check them in the editor and download 1080 × 1920 MP4s with no watermark. Posting them and setting the related video stay with you. More on YouTube to Shorts.

A link doesn't get tapped because it's there. Viewers in the Shorts feed are happy swiping, and leaving the feed is a choice. YouTube's Creator Liaison put it as thinking less about getting viewers to click through and more about getting them to want to. YouTube's guidance, and what follows from it:

• Give value, and leave the rest open. The Short should be worth watching on its own (YouTube is explicit that a clip of a longer video has to make sense without it), but it shouldn't be the whole story. One tip of five, the question and the start of the answer, the story up to the turn.
• Ask for the tap at the end. YouTube suggests a call to action in the last 5 seconds: say what's in the full video (YouTube's example: “Get the full step-by-step breakdown by clicking the link right here”) and point down toward the link, or flash the long video's thumbnail.
• Promise only what the video delivers. The Short is a promise about the long video, the way a thumbnail is. Link to the video that pays it off, not your newest one.
• Reward the click straight away. YouTube says the first 5 to 10 seconds of the long video should go straight to what the Short promised, with no slow intro, logos or channel news. If the moment is 20 minutes in, consider a chapter (the YouTube timestamp generator makes the list) so they can jump to it.
• Win the first second. None of this matters if people swipe. Open on the strongest line, not the setup; see short video hooks and how to get more views on YouTube Shorts.
• Say the same thing in both titles. A Short titled with the long video's topic tells viewers where the link goes. Writing titles people search for is in YouTube Shorts SEO.

Series work too: YouTube's Creator Liaison gave Part 1 of a Short linking to Part 2 as an example. And the link isn't fixed: when you make a better video on the same topic, switch the Short's related video to it.