How to make YouTube clips in 2026: the honest guide (no gimmicks)

How to make YouTube clips in 2026: the honest guide (no gimmicks)

If you landed here searching for "how to make YouTube clips," the first thing you need to know is that the game changed not long ago. On April 17, 2026, YouTube made it official: the Clips button on the viewer side is gone. That feature that let anyone grab up to 60 seconds of a video, give it a title and republish it as a mini-video inside YouTube? Scrapped.

A few other paths are left. And this guide is the honest version of each one. No miracle promises, just what works for which kind of creator.

Before you start: what do you want the clip for?

It matters, and a lot. There are three common uses, and each calls for a different tool:

Sharing a moment with a friend. Drop it in the group chat, on Discord, on WhatsApp. For that, the simplest path is the new timestamp sharing. No downloads needed.

Saving a segment for personal reference. Studying, curation, clipping a lecture. A manual editor or screen recorder gets it done.

Turning long content into vertical clips to grow on TikTok, Shorts and Reels. This is where things move up a level. Manual editing eats your whole weekend. An AI tool is what gets you volume.

Let's go in order.

Path 1: share with a timestamp (the direct Clips replacement)

This is what YouTube put in Clips' place.

Open the video in the app, tap Share, and turn on the option to share from the current time. The link comes out with the exact second. Whoever clicks lands right on that moment.

Pros: fast, official, no tool needed. Cons: it doesn't make a video, it makes a link. It doesn't work for posting on social media as a fresh piece. You can't tie it to TikTok, Reels or Shorts.

Bottom line: good for dropping in a group chat. Not good for growing a channel.

Path 2: YouTube Studio (the official clip on the creator side)

If the video is yours, inside YouTube Studio you can still create a Clip of up to 60 seconds. Go to Content, open the video, and pick Clips or Edit as a Short.

The company itself said it'll improve this part throughout 2026. The expanded version, with automatic "clippable" moment suggestions, has started rolling out for English-language podcasts in the US and Canada. Elsewhere it's still manual: you slide, pick the segment, save.

Pros: official, direct, no download. Cons: it has to be your own channel, the 60-second limit leaves no room for context, it doesn't crop to vertical 9:16 with automatic captions, and the automatic suggestions haven't reached most languages yet.

Bottom line: fine if you just want a quick Short from your own video. It doesn't replace a production pipeline.

Path 3: screen recorder (Clipchamp, CapCut, any of them)

The old-school way. Open the video in your browser, run a recorder, capture the segment, take it into an editor.

It works with Clipchamp (which has a direct button to pull from YouTube in some languages), CapCut, Streamlabs Cross Clip, and even your phone's built-in recorder.

Pros: flexible, you can trim exactly what you want, exports in any resolution. Cons: it depends on you watching everything to pick the segment. On a 3-hour live, you watch 3 hours. Then you have to trim by hand, flip it to vertical, generate captions, adjust. A whole afternoon per live.

Bottom line: good for a one-off clip here and there. For anyone producing at volume, it's unsustainable.

Path 4: an AI clipping tool

The category that took off over the last two years, precisely because the other paths don't scale.

The idea is simple: you paste the video link, the AI watches on its own, finds the moments with energy (a turn, a reaction, a joke, a punchline), crops to vertical, captions it and hands back a batch of clips ready to post.

Pros: ridiculous speed (a 3-hour live in 10 to 15 minutes), volume (8 to 15 clips per live, not 1), automatic captions, 9:16 already framed.

Cons: it depends on the quality of the AI. Global tools charge in dollars and their captions in other languages come out with slang, accent and proper-name errors. You have to choose well.

How a specialist clipping tool sets itself apart from the rest

To pick an AI clipping tool in 2026, these are the axes that actually carry weight:

Caption accuracy. If the WER (Word Error Rate) is high, you'll have to review every clip. You only truly save time when the captions come out right the first time.

Speed. To post the same day, you need a fast pipeline. A tool that takes 1 hour on a 3-hour live is a different animal from one that takes 15 minutes.

Source support. If you only use YouTube, any of them will do. If you're a streamer and need to cut Twitch or Kick, most don't cover it. There has to be native integration.

Output format. Pure vertical 9:16 for TikTok, Shorts and Reels. Square is worse on Shorts, and wastes hook space on TikTok.

Pricing in your currency. Charging in dollars means exchange fees, currency swings, and usually a plan that's too small for anyone producing seriously.

How Cut.Pro does it

We were built with this use case in mind from day one. The flow is straightforward:

You paste the YouTube link (or connect your Twitch or Kick account, or upload a file). Cut.Pro takes the whole video, finds the best moments, crops to 9:16, captions it with accurate transcription (validated on a large sample of real creator audio), frames the right camera when the content has more than one person, and hands back a set of finished clips.

From there you publish straight to Shorts, TikTok and Reels, with scheduling if you want it.

A 3-hour live turns into 8 to 15 clips in 10 to 15 minutes. The free plan is 15 credits a month, no card. The Plus plan starts at R$69,90/month with 450 credits. Card and Pix.

Which path to choose

To sum it up in a single paragraph:

If it's sending a segment to a group chat, timestamp. If it's a short one-off Short from your own video, YouTube Studio. If it's an occasional clip for studying, CapCut or Clipchamp. If it's volume of vertical clips to grow a channel using a live, podcast or long vlog as raw material, a specialized AI tool, and coming from the Brazilian market, Cut.Pro.

Want to try it? Open Cut.Pro, paste a link to one of your own videos and run the free plan. In 15 minutes you'll have the batch of clips in front of you and can decide whether it makes sense for your channel's routine.

YouTube's old Clips is gone. The new path is deeper, faster and finally fits the workflow of people who actually create.

Read also

• YouTube killed Clips: now the door is open for people who really clip: detailed context on the April 17 change.
• How to make YouTube clips on your phone in 2026: the mobile-focused version of this same guide.
• Cross clip in 2026: how the same clip becomes views across all three networks: after you cut, what to do with the batch.
• AI clipping for Twitch and Kick: the equivalent guide for streamers.

About the author

Lucas Toledo is co-founder of Cut.Pro, a Brazilian AI clipping tool used by streamers, podcasters and creators in Brazil to turn lives and long-form content into Shorts, TikTok and Reels.