YouTube is one of the largely viewed online platforms around the globe. Since it was introduced to date it has released many features to enhance the user experience. One of the features it released was “timestamp YouTube videos”. This feature has been widely used by almost every YouTuber for their channel. For many, the timestamp YouTube feature is a new concept and initially they do find it difficult to understand. In this article, we will explain to you how to timestamp YouTube and what is its importance.
Why is the timestamp YouTube feature important?
YouTube’s timestamp feature allows you to directly skip to the part that you want to watch in a video. Sometimes, you might want to watch a few important parts of a video that might be half an hour long. Then timestamp will help you to skip to that part instantly without having the whole video. If you are a YouTuber, then giving your viewers options to get to the content quicker can be easily done by timestamp the YouTube video feature. You can timestamp separate parts of the video so that your viewer can see certain important segments of your video that they want. This will lead to an increase in user experience, and due to this specific feature, you might even get more subscribers.
Moreover, YouTube ranks off of user watch time and viewer retention. That means, when someone clicks your video’s timestamp link, it directly goes to that section of the video, it is counted as two views. Hence, instead of your viewers not having enough time to watch your whole video they can skip to the part they were searching for. And by this, you even get more views on your video. In closing, if you ever transcribe your videos to text on your blog, you can provide your readers with the opportunity to view and read that specific part of the video. This not only promotes your channel but also increases search engine optimization. Doing this also helps your videos rank properly.
The ranking of your videos largely depends on the amount of information you can provide the search engine team. The more information you provide them, the better they understand your content. This will help you rank and provide useful information to the readers and viewers. Now that you know how helpful the timestamp YouTube feature is, you can see how to timestamp YouTube videos in the next section of this article.
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How To Timestamp A YouTube Video?
There are three different methods by which you can timestamp YouTube videos.
- Timestamp a YouTube video from your browser or desktop.
- Timestamp YouTube video by modifying the URL of the video.
- Timestamp YouTube video from your YouTube app.
Below, we have explained in detail, how to timestamp the YouTube video using the above three methods.
Method 1: Guide on how to timestamp YouTube videos from your browser
Follow the below steps to share YouTube videos at a specific time using the browser.
- Open your browser on the PC.
- Then go to youtube.com and open the video you want to timestamp.
- Note down the time you want the video to open after sharing. Once, you note down the time, click on the “Share” button located below the playback window.
- After you press the “Share” button a small panel will pop up on the screen. At the bottom of the screen, you will find a check box placed next to “Start at”.
When you check the “Start at” box, you will see that a sharable link is added with a timestamp saying “?t=_h_m_s”
- By default, the text panel next to “Start at” must show the time at which you clicked the “Share” button. But you can change it and add the time you want the video to open.
- Once you set the time, you can share the video through one of the social media options available in the panel.
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Method 2: Guide on how to timestamp a YouTube video by modifying the URL
Follow the below steps to share YouTube videos by adding a string of code to the URL of the video.
- Open your browser on the PC.
- Then go to youtube.com and open the video you want to timestamp.
NOTE: If you press the “Share” button a small panel will pop up on the screen. In that panel, you will see a sharable link with a string “?t=’TIME’” attached to it. The “TIME” in the string stands for the time you clicked the share button or the time you would like the video to play. For instance, if you press the share button and check the box at 0:18. Then the string would become “?t=18”.
- However, the URL in the “Share” panel and the one in the address bar which is located at the top of your browser are slightly different. You will notice that the URL in the address bar is longer than what appeared in the Share panel.
- If you want to modify the full URL from the address bar, then you will need to replace the question mark (?) with the Ampersand sign (&) in the string code. This means that now your string code would become “&t=’TIME’”.
- In this method, you will have to add the TIME manually in the URL representing hours, minutes, and seconds with “h, m, and s” respectively.
- After modifying the string code, you can either share it with the people or put it in your blog.
Method 3: Guide on how to timestamp a YouTube video from the YouTube app
Follow the below steps to share YouTube videos from the YouTube app.
- Open the YouTube mobile app.
- Play the video you want to timestamp and share with your people.
- Find out where you want your YouTube video to stop, then pause the video.
- Click on the “Share” button. Then, choose “Copy link”
- Once, you have done that much, select through which social media app you would like to share the link.
- After pasting the video in the respective app, add the string code “&t=TIME” with the TIME of the video that you would like to timestamp.
- You can share it with your people.
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Final words
Hopefully, this guide helped you understand how to use the timestamp YouTube feature. It is a hassle-free method to increase the user experience by relieving the viewers to find a particular point in a video all by themselves.
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