YouTube removed Clips. Here’s what changed and what still works.

Updated 19 September 2026

On 17 April 2026, YouTube stopped letting viewers create Clips — the scissors button that turned a 5–60 second section of a video into a titled link that played that section on a loop. Clips made before then still play. YouTube’s replacement for viewers, Share with timestamp, opens the whole video at a chosen moment but has no end point and no title. Creators keep a separate tool, Video Clips, in YouTube Studio. To make a titled, looping clip of any video now, you need a third-party tool.

Key facts

• When: 17 April 2026, announced by TeamYouTube in the YouTube Help Community.
• What was removed: creating new Clips as a viewer. The Clip button under videos is gone.
• What still works: Clips created before the change. YouTube said they “will still be available”, without giving an end date.
• Replacement for viewers: Share with timestamp — a start point only.
• Replacement for creators: Video Clips in YouTube Studio, which republishes a section of their own video or archived live stream. Video Clips for Shorts and auto-suggested “clippable moments” were announced for later in 2026.
• YouTube’s stated reasoning: it pointed to third-party tools that already offer more advanced clipping features.

What exactly changed

A YouTube Clip let anyone watching a video pick a section of between 5 and 60 seconds, give it a title of up to 140 characters, and share a youtube.com/clip/… link. Opening that link played just the chosen section, over and over, inside the original video’s player. Nothing was downloaded or re-uploaded; a Clip was a pointer into the original video.

Since 17 April 2026 that button is gone for viewers, and there is no way to create a new Clip on YouTube itself. If you are looking for the scissors icon under a video and cannot find it, that is why — it is not a setting, a bug or a problem with your account.

What still works on YouTube

• Your existing clips. Links you or anyone else made before the change keep playing.
• Share with timestamp. Under a video, tap Share and set the start time (on desktop, tick Start at). The link opens the full video from that moment. It cannot stop at an end point and has no title of its own. On phones and tablets it was rolled out as part of the same change.
• Video Clips in YouTube Studio — for creators only, and only for their own videos. It publishes a section as new content on the channel rather than making a shareable pointer into someone else’s video.

Your options now, compared

The embed trick needs no tool: https://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID?start=30&end=45 plays from 0:30 and stops at 0:45. Both values are seconds from the start of the video. It plays the section once and stops, and it has no title.

How to make a looping clip now

This is the closest thing to the old Clip button, and it works on any public YouTube video:

1. Paste the link into ClipBack. Or skip that step: change youtube.com to clipback.tv in the address bar of any YouTube video, and it opens ready to clip.
2. Set the start and end. Drag the two handles, then fine-tune them — down to the millisecond if you need to.
3. Name it and create it. Titles can be up to 140 characters, as they could on YouTube. You get one link that plays just that section on a loop.

Clips are free, can be any length and need no account. Signing in keeps them in a library you can come back to. The video plays through YouTube’s own player, so nothing is downloaded and views still count for the creator.

What to do with clips you already made

Nothing, if you only want them to keep working — YouTube says they will. If you want a copy of the section somewhere you control, ClipBack’s Import button takes a youtube.com/clip/… link and reads the video, the start and end times and the title from it, so you can save it as your own clip and edit or loop it from there.

Import reads the clip from YouTube, so it only works while the clip is still viewable there. A clip that has been made private or deleted, or whose video has been removed, cannot be read.

Why YouTube removed Clips

YouTube’s announcement said Share with timestamp would become the main way to share a specific moment in a video, replacing Clips. It pointed to third-party tools that already offer more advanced clipping features, and said its own clipping work in 2026 would focus on creators: Video Clips in Studio now, and Video Clips for Shorts plus auto-suggested “clippable moments” later in the year. YouTube did not publish usage figures or a more detailed reason.

Frequently asked questions