YouTube reshuffles clipping by removing viewer options while bringing Clips to Shorts

YouTube still wants its users to keep things brief, but it’s reimagining the tools that cut videos down to size. A feature called Clips, which gave viewers the power to pull short-form segments from their favorite videos, is being discontinued. In its place, creators will be able to generate clips via YouTube Studio.

Thanks to the popularity of short-form feeds, clipping has become an important tactic for creators big and small. As a result, numerous third-party services have emerged to streamline and monetize clipping. The brands buying into that industry range from OpusClip to MrBeast.

YouTube hasn’t ignored the rise of clipping, and it even built a content shelf to hold short-form segments that originated on long-form streams. At the same time, the expansion of the clipping industry affected YouTube’s plans. According to a statement from the platform, there are “a number of third-party tools with advanced clipping features” that will seamlessly replace the bygone Clips feature.

Instead, YouTube is pivoting toward Shorts. Creators can already repurpose their content to fit the Shorts format, and that process is getting an upgrade. Video Clips on Shorts will arrive “later this year,” and when it does, creators will be able to make existing Shorts even shorter.

“We are focused on launching more clipping tools for creators in 2026. Video Clips is available in Studio today, allowing you to republish clips from longer videos and archived live streams,” reads a YouTube support page. “Later this year, we will be rolling out Video Clips to Shorts, and launching auto-suggestions to help you identify your most ‘clippable’ moments.”

The reshuffling of the clipping interface is part of a broader shift that will make timestamp-based tools the easiest way for viewers to spread shareable moments. The “Share at Timestamp” option is coming to mobile devices, letting on-the-go users send a clip over to their friends. Timestamps are useful for long-form creators, and they even have some value in the monetization department, so YouTube has a lot of reasons to increase its investment in that part of its interface.

The main losers from this change are the fans who turned clipping into a profitable side hustle. YouTube’s response, as previously mentioned, is to direct those enterprising fans toward any number of third-party solutions. Clipping is still a big deal on YouTube, but the methods used to take that action are about to look quite different.