To upload a YouTube Short from a computer, open YouTube Studio, click Create, then Upload videos, and choose a vertical or square video of three minutes or less; YouTube classifies it as a Short automatically. You can publish at once or schedule it, in Studio or in SkedCast.
Key takeaways
- YouTube's real caption limit is 5,000 characters.
- YouTube’s publishing API accepts a future publish time, so SkedCast hands the scheduled time to YouTube directly.
- The manual, native way to post is below, alongside exactly what SkedCast automates on top of it.
How to post on YouTube manually
The native, no-scheduler way to post on YouTube, step by step:
- Go to YouTube Studio (studio.youtube.com) in a browser and sign in with the Google account for your channel.
- Click Create → Upload videos, and choose a vertical or square video file that’s 3 minutes or under.
- Add a title (up to 100 characters) and description, and choose whether it’s made for kids (required by YouTube’s COPPA rules).
- Publish immediately, or use YouTube Studio’s native "Schedule" option to set a future date and time — YouTube does support this natively.
- YouTube automatically classifies a qualifying vertical or square video of 3 minutes or under as a Short; there’s no separate manual toggle to force it.
How to schedule it automatically with SkedCast
The YouTube scheduler puts YouTube on the same content calendar as your other channels, and bulk scheduling fills it from one spreadsheet. What SkedCast adds on top of the manual flow above:
- YouTube is one of only two platforms in this series (with Facebook) where SkedCast can hand the scheduled time to the platform’s own native scheduling. It is a choice you turn on, not the default: with it off, SkedCast holds the video and publishes it at the time. With it on, the video uploads to YouTube as private straight away and YouTube makes it public at the time, which is why an unlisted video cannot use it.
- SkedCast’s "Publish as a Short" option pre-checks your video against YouTube’s own Shorts shape and length rules before upload, so you catch a video that won’t actually qualify before it’s scheduled — though YouTube always makes the final classification after processing.
- A single Google account can own multiple channels or Brand Accounts — Google’s own account chooser asks which one to connect, so uploads land on the channel you picked.
- Bulk-schedule a batch of Shorts across a content calendar in one pass instead of uploading and scheduling each one individually in YouTube Studio.
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FAQ
- Is there a separate upload process for a YouTube Short?
- No — YouTube has no dedicated Shorts upload endpoint. A vertical video that’s 3 minutes or under is automatically classified as a Short by YouTube itself, whether it was uploaded manually through YouTube Studio or scheduled through SkedCast.
- Does YouTube support native scheduling?
- Yes — YouTube is one of the few platforms in this series with genuine native scheduling. SkedCast can hand the scheduled publish time to YouTube’s own systems if you turn on Native scheduling for the video; by default SkedCast holds it and publishes at the time.
- What is the character limit for a YouTube post?
- 5,000 characters. SkedCast’s composer counts the way YouTube does and warns before you schedule a post that is too long.
- Can you schedule YouTube posts in advance with SkedCast?
- Yes. YouTube’s API accepts a future publish time, so SkedCast hands the time to YouTube itself, and you can plan posts weeks ahead from one calendar with your other channels.
- Can you post to several YouTube accounts at once?
- Yes. Write the post once in SkedCast, pick every YouTube account it should go to, and SkedCast publishes to each, spacing the posts out per account so they do not all land in the same minute.