YouTube timestamp link generator

How to link to an exact moment

The conversion you care about is human time into seconds, and that is the part people get wrong by hand. Type the moment the way you read it off the player and let the tool do the arithmetic.

1. 1Play the video and note the moment you want. Aim a second or two early, because a link that lands mid-word is worse than one that lands slightly before.
2. 2Paste the video URL into the tool.
3. 3Enter the time as you see it on the player, for example 1:23:45 or 4:07, rather than converting it yourself.
4. 4Choose which link shape you want. The long watch URL is clearer to read; the youtu.be form is shorter for a message or a slide.
5. 5Copy it and open it once to confirm it lands where you meant. The cost of checking is five seconds.
6. 6If you are sending several moments from one video, label each link with what it points at, because the URLs are indistinguishable at a glance.

The parameters, and where each one applies

There are three different mechanisms for pointing at a moment in a YouTube video, and they are not interchangeable. Using the wrong one is the single most common reason a timestamp appears to be ignored.

• On a watch URL: youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID&t=5025, using & because v= is already there.
• On a share link: youtu.be/VIDEO_ID?t=5025, using ? because there is nothing else on the URL.
• Inside an iframe: start=5025 on the embed URL, with an optional end= to stop at a set second.
• The value is a whole number of seconds from the beginning, so 1:23:45 is 5025. Colons are not accepted anywhere in the parameter.
• For chapters rather than a link, YouTube needs timestamps in the video description, the first one at 0:00, at least three of them, and each section at least ten seconds long.
• The parameter works on Shorts URLs too, though on a video under a minute it rarely earns the effort.

What goes wrong

A timestamp link points at a position in a file that somebody else controls. Most breakages come from that fact rather than from the URL.

• Pasting 1:23:45 straight into t=. It is not accepted, and depending on where the link is rendered you either get the start of the video or a dead link.
• Timestamping a premiere or a live stream before processing finishes. The timeline can shift afterwards, which moves every link you already sent.
• Linking into a video that gets reuploaded. A reupload has a new id, so the old link does not move, it simply stops existing.
• Trusting a timestamp as a citation. The video can be edited, trimmed or taken down, and nothing about your link records what was there.
• Some mobile apps open a deep link in the YouTube app at the start of the video rather than at the timestamp, which is worth knowing before you build a workflow on it.

When a link is the wrong answer

Timestamps are for pointing somebody at one moment. When you find yourself sending several in a row, the format has stopped fitting the job.

• If you are sending more than two or three moments from the same video, chapters serve the viewer better and they stay with the video.
• For a short excerpt you want people to watch as a unit, YouTube's own Clip feature makes a shareable segment of between five and sixty seconds with its own URL.
• For a quote you need to survive, take the quote in text with the timestamp alongside it. The link is a convenience, not evidence.
• Inside your own video description or a comment on your own video, plain text is enough and reads better than a URL.