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YouTube will finally let you create short clips of longer videos

You'll soon be able to create short, sharable video clips from longer livestream and uploaded video content on YouTube.

Ry Crist Senior Editor / Reviews - Labs
Originally hailing from Troy, Ohio, Ry Crist is a writer, a text-based adventure connoisseur, a lover of terrible movies and an enthusiastic yet mediocre cook. A CNET editor since 2013, Ry's beats include smart home tech, lighting, appliances, broadband and home networking.
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  • 10 years product testing experience with the CNET Home team
Ry Crist
2 min read
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YouTube's new clipping tool is available now with select videos on Android and desktop, with iOS support coming soon.

Angela Lang/CNET

YouTube is adding a new clipping tool that lets viewers quickly create short, sharable clips of up to 60 seconds from longer video uploads, the platform announced Thursday. The move gives video creators and their fans an easy way to increase a channel's visibility, and to grow.

"We've heard a lot of feedback from creators and viewers who have wanted an easy way to capture short segments of content and share moments from videos or streams," reads a YouTube blog announcing the feature. "We're excited to begin our testing of a clipping feature on YouTube starting today with a small group of creators while we start gathering feedback."

As the feature rolls out, you'll notice a new icon in YouTube's video player that looks like a pair of scissors. Give it a click, and you'll be able to create a custom clip from whatever video you're watching, with a run-time of anywhere from 5 to 60 seconds. Once created, you'll be able to share the looping video clip on other platforms, like Facebook or Twitter. You'll also be able to create a direct link to the clip, or create an embeddable version that you can add to a website.

Clip creation is currently limited to desktop and Android devices, YouTube adds, with support for iOS devices coming soon. You can read YouTube's help page for the feature for more on how it works, or you can try it out for yourself by watching this "sneak peek" video from YouTube's engineers which is, itself, clippable.

See also: Watch full movies for free on YouTube