YouTube Just Shared a Sneak Preview of Its New Video Sharing Feature, Clips

A new article on Social media Today reports that YouTube seems to have opened up more to adding a short-form video format after its launch of Shorts last year. The platform just started testing a new option which will let users share segments from videos and live streams, and they're calling that "Clips." Currently, this is still in beta, and only available to a limited number of gaming channels. Support for the options is also limited to desktop and Android devices for now.



Up until now, if you were sharing YouTube videos and live streams, you were forced to use YouTube's watch page URL. It wasn't possible to start a video at a specific time. Clips allows users to share a part of a video or a live stream -- and the sections can be anything between five and sixty seconds long. The pictures here show some screenshots shared by the Creator Insider channel and illustrates how users are testing the new feature. They start by clicking on the clip icon (located beside the share button) on this video. They then proceed to plug in a title name and choose the time stamp for the segment from the video with the help of a slider. After that, they can click on the "Share Clip" button to get social media sharing options.



As you can see, the clip generates a unique URL. Users are free to copy and share that manually or on a specific social media platform:



A clips section tab in the left sidebar allows users to share, delete, and manage their segments. "Clips" will likely be a useful feature for sharing snippets of content for gamers and others like marketers who need to show quick, interesting samples from longer videos.