YouTube is Expanding Access to its New ‘Clips’ Option, Another Way to Share YouTube Content

YouTube says that it will be rolling out its new Clips option to 10x more channels over the coming weeks, providing another way to share specific segments from YouTube videos.

As it sounds, Clips enables users to select and share a small portion of an eligible video clip (up to 60 seconds in length), which will then play on a loop directly on the original video’s watch page.

Here’s an example of how YouTube Clips work:

Once you’ve created a clip, you can then share it to social media, or via e-mail, with YouTube allocating a new URL for the video Clip.

I mean, it’s okay – it would be better if it were an automatic GIF maker or the like (which is an option via third-party tools, and YouTube was working on a native GIF maker). But either way, it is another sharing option for YouTube videos, and it could come in handy for highlighting specific segments and/or moments to your social feeds.

But up till now, few channels have had the Clips option available. On the YouTube Help site, it notes that Clips is ‘currently in limited alpha’, with the focus on gaming creators and helping to maximize sharing of gaming content.

That’s not necessarily going to change with this expansion, with YouTube noting that the focus of Clips will remain on gaming creators.

If a channel does have Clips access, you’ll see this button below the video playback screen.

It’s set to start showing up more often, so look out for it, and give a test if you want to get a better idea of how it works.

YouTube is also adding a new Clips view counter for eligible channels, providing a way to track Clips engagement.

It’s not groundbreaking, but it could be an interesting option, and again, it does provide another process for engagement, and for making shorter clips out of your longer YouTube uploads.

And as we’ve seen with TikTok, short video clips are very popular right now.

It could be worth considering in your process as it becomes available to more channels over time.

You can read more about YouTube Clips here.