How to schedule YouTube Shorts (and regular videos) ahead of time

YouTube Shorts are the lightest way to stay visible on YouTube between longer videos, and they are often cut from those longer videos anyway. Scheduling them lets you publish a steady few a week from one editing session.

What makes a video a Short

According to YouTube's own help page, a Short is a video of up to 3 minutes with a square or vertical aspect ratio. Anything horizontal, or longer than 3 minutes, is a regular video. The practical rules:

• Shoot or crop to 9:16 vertical. Square works, but vertical fills the phone screen.
• Keep it under 3 minutes; most Shorts that do well are well under one.
• Put the point in the first two seconds, because the Shorts feed is swiped as fast as TikTok's.

What YouTube accepts through Publedia

The 100-character title and the 5,000-byte description are YouTube's own limits, from its API documentation, and neither may contain < or >. Bytes are not characters: English letters are one byte each, but accented letters, most other scripts and emoji take two to four, so a description in another language reaches the limit sooner. In Publedia the description is the caption and the title has a field of its own, but the title is placed at the top of the description when the video is sent, so it counts toward those 5,000 bytes as well.

One more thing YouTube decides, not Publedia: YouTube makes every video uploaded through an API project it has not audited private. Publedia asks for each video to be public, and if YouTube uploads it as private instead, you can change its visibility in YouTube Studio.

Connect your channel

1. Open Channels and select Connect channel.
2. Choose YouTube. Sign in with the Google account that owns or manages the channel, and approve access.
3. If your Google account has more than one channel, choose the one to connect on Google's screen. Connect each channel separately; each is its own channel in Publedia.

YouTube connects directly to YouTube's own API, without a go-between.

Schedule a Short

1. Upload the vertical clip to Files, or add it in the composer.
2. Select Create post, choose your YouTube channel, and attach the video.
3. Choose the Short format ("Reel or Short" in the format controls).
4. Write the title. For a Short, the title is often what people read first, so make it the hook in a few words.
5. Write the description in the caption field. A sentence of context, a link to the full video if the Short is cut from one, and a couple of relevant hashtags are plenty.
6. Check the preview, select Pick a time, choose the slot, and select Schedule.

Schedule a regular video

The steps are the same, with the regular video format instead of Short. Regular videos through Publedia can be up to 15 minutes. Give longer videos a fuller description: what the video covers, links mentioned in it, and chapters if you use them.

When to post YouTube Shorts

Buffer's 2026 timing study, which looked at Shorts separately from long videos, found:

• Shorts: Friday at 4 p.m. was the single best time, with 6 and 7 p.m. on Fridays also strong. Evenings during the week did well, afternoons were quieter, and Friday, Saturday and Thursday were the strongest days.
• Long videos: Sunday at 10 a.m. was the best slot by a wide margin, with morning uploads between about 8 and 11 a.m. doing best overall.

These are local times and an average across many channels. Use them as a first schedule and compare with your own numbers after a month. Sprout Social's 2026 study did not cover YouTube.

Keep a weekly Shorts rhythm

Two to three Shorts a week is sustainable for most people, and it is easier if every long video feeds the Shorts:

1. Publish the long video.
2. Cut three to five moments from it that stand alone. The repurposing guide walks through choosing them.
3. Schedule the Shorts over the following two weeks, each linking back to the full video in its description.

Publedia's Repurpose step (on the Ultra plan and up) transcribes a long video, suggests moments with an opening line for each, and cuts the ones you accept into Files, ready to schedule.

Publishing the same clip to TikTok and Reels

A vertical clip under a minute usually works on YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels. In Publedia, select all three channels in one post and write a version of the caption for each from its avatar: YouTube gets a title and a description, TikTok and Instagram a caption. See the TikTok scheduling guide for what TikTok accepts.

After it publishes

Views, likes and comments for each video appear in Publedia's Analytics (beta), next to your other networks. Reply to comments in YouTube Studio for now.

Troubleshooting

• The video went up as a regular video instead of a Short. Check that it is vertical or square and under 3 minutes: those are YouTube's rules for a Short.
• The video was refused. Check that it is no longer than 15 minutes, that the post has one video and nothing else, and that the title and description contain no < or >.
• The video is private on YouTube. YouTube keeps uploads from unaudited API projects private; change its visibility in YouTube Studio.
• The channel needs reconnecting. Open Channels and select Reconnect beside it, then sign in with Google again.
• A post failed. Open it from Posts; the YouTube row says what happened and what to do. See fixing a failed post.