How to make a YouTube Short on iPad


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If you want to make a YouTube Short on your iPad, that is possible, but your options are kind of limited. Let’s take a look.

❌ No trending sounds

One thing is clear. It’s not possible to do a trending music Short that way. Here’s why not:

When you watch other people’s Shorts, you can’t even click on the songs that are being used like you can in the iPhone YouTube App. And that’s true for Safari and the iPad app.

They also don’t show up when you click on “create” directly in the app. Here’s how that flow looks:

Creating in the YouTube app

Clicking on video gets me here.

Recording in the YouTube iPad app

And then on the next screen, I can literally record and that’s it. No option to add sound from elsewhere.

Read next: How to Publish Podcasts on YouTube and YouTube Music

✅ Talking head video

You can, however, Record a video of you talking. You can either do that with your regular iPad camera or directly in the app, following the steps above. Those videos are then uploaded as a Short.

✅ Clips from other video

If you create shorts from other videos through services like Opus Clips, here’s how that works on an iPad.

Download the file from Opus Clips on Safari.

YouTube Shorts via Opus Clips
That saves to the Files app. Make sure that’s installed.

Then go to YouTube on Safari. This doesn’t work in the iPad app – as that only pulls video files from the iPad directory.

Upload YouTube short on iPad in Safari

Click “upload video” and then “choose files.” Then find the folder where the video was saved. Once it’s uploaded you can publish it as a Short.


So publishing YouTube Shorts from an iPad isn’t as easy as doing it from your iPhone or even your desktop, but it is possible. These are the ways that have worked for me.

Need a new iPad case? Try this.

iPad case


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