Using YouTube Shorts with Buffer

YouTube has more users than any other video platform, offering unparalleled distribution on desktop and mobile. You can reach more people on the world’s most popular video platform with Buffer’s YouTube Shorts scheduling and content planning tools. Let's get into the details.

📝 YouTube Shorts scheduling is available on our new Buffer plans. On a Legacy plan? Get in touch with us at hello@buffer.com to discuss your options!

In this article:

These features are available for YouTube Shorts

Publishing Analytics Engagement
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How YouTube Shorts works with Buffer

When it comes to YouTube, there are two types of publishing:

Automatic publishing - schedule your Short in Buffer and we'll automatically publish it for you.

Notification publishing - schedule your Short in Buffer and you'll get a notification on your phone when it's time to publish your Short and you can finish publishing in the YouTube app.

You'll see these options in the composer where you can either choose  Automatic (if your post can be scheduled automatically) or  Notify Me (if you either choose to get a mobile notification for your post or if it contains content that can't be published automatically, such as videos that are over the duration limit). 

Switching from Automatic to Notify Me in the Buffer composer

⚠️ If you have a YouTube account connected and wish to use notification based publishing, you must set up notifications on your mobile device to ensure you don't miss any posts. (Download our mobile app on iOS or Android).

Connecting and refreshing your YouTube channel

Head to your Channels area to connect your YouTube channel: https://account.buffer.com/channels

You can connect multiple YouTube channels to Buffer. To make sure Buffer knows which one want to connect, log in to the Google account that is the owner of the YouTube channel in another browser tab before trying to connect it to Buffer.

To see a step-by-step guide and troubleshooting steps, check out the article: Connect your channels to Buffer.

If your connected YouTube/X channel requires a refresh, check out the article Refreshing a channel in Buffer.

📝 Good-to-knows:

  • Due to API limitations, you must be the owner of the YouTube channel to connect it to Buffer.
  • To access full functionality for YouTube, make sure to verify your email with YouTube.
    • Unverified users will see a limit of 10 posts within 24 hours. They will also not be allowed to add external links to their post descriptions. Verified users have no posting limitations.

Scheduling YouTube Shorts

Check out the table below to see which features are available while scheduling posts for YouTube Shorts.

Limitations

  • The "best time to post" feature in Analyze is not available for YouTube, but for advice on creating an optimal posting schedule, check out our blog post: The Best Time to Post on YouTube.
  • YouTube Community posting isn’t available through Buffer. If this is something you’d like to see, feel free to upvote it on our Suggestions Board.

Features & good-to-knows Notes
Scheduling posts

Checkout our step-by-step guide to scheduling posts on any social channel or peruse YouTube-specific details below.
Daily posting limit 10 posts per 24 hours for users who have not verified their email addresses. Unlimited posts per 24 hours for users who have verified their email address. Learn more about Daily posting limits here.
Character limit 100 characters for the title (Title field). 5,000 characters for the description (type this into the main composer). Learn more about Character limits for each social network here.
Hashtags In the composer, type the hashtags you'd like to use. When the post is published, the hashtags will hyperlink just as if they were sent from the native platform itself. Learn more about How hashtags work in Buffer.
Thumbnails Please note we do not currently support selecting a custom thumbnail for YouTube Shorts.

Video specifications for YouTube Shorts

YouTube supports videos only, and YouTube posts cannot be created without a video attached. Buffer currently supports YouTube Shorts only. We do not support long-form YouTube videos at this time.

  Videos
Number allowed per post

1
Video length Up to 60 seconds*
File size 10GB or less
Dimensions / Aspect ratio

Either Square (1:1) or Portrait (9:16).

Portrait is recommended and will appear best on mobile devices.
File types supported .mov, .mp4, .mpg, .mpeg, .avi, .WebM
Custom thumbnail supported No
Giphy and Canva integration No
Alt text

It is not possible to add alt text to YouTube videos via Buffer.

Learn more about adding alt text to your images here.

*Note: Although YouTube now allows Shorts up to 3 minutes long, Buffer can only send shorts up to 1 minute long due to API restrictions.

Engaging with YouTube comments

Buffer’s engagement features are only available for Facebook and Instagram. YouTube is not supported within Buffer's engagement features at this time.

YouTube analytics

We can post all day, but the real excitement comes when seeing the reactions to our posts.

You can view analytics for each of your YouTube Shorts (views, likes and comments) by heading to the Publish tab and then the Sent tab.

YouTube Sent Posts

YouTube is not currently supported within Analyze.

YouTube error library

We don't currently have an error library for YouTube, but feel free to reach out to our Customer Advocates via hello@buffer.com if you're hitting any errors.

📝Do you have a YouTube feature suggestion? We’d love for you to submit or upvote it here on our feature suggestions board.

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