YouTube Timestamp Link Generator

What is a YouTube timestamp link?

A timestamp link is an ordinary YouTube link with one extra instruction attached: start playing at this exact second. Send someone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&t=95 and the video opens 95 seconds in rather than at the beginning.

The instruction is the t parameter, and its value is a number of seconds counted from the start of the video. YouTube also understands an older spelling that mixes units, such as t=1m35s, but a plain number of seconds is what the Share button produces now and it is understood everywhere, so that is what this tool writes.

The point of a timestamp link is respect for the other person's time. If the useful part of a 40-minute recording is two minutes long, a link that lands on it is far more likely to be watched than a link plus a written instruction to skip ahead.

How to make a link that starts at a specific time

1. Paste the video link. Any YouTube format works, and an existing t value in it is replaced rather than added to.
2. Enter the start time. Fill in hours, minutes and seconds. Empty boxes count as zero, so for a moment 45 seconds in you only need the seconds box.
3. Copy the link. Both a full youtube.com/watch link and a short youtu.be link are produced. Either behaves the same.

The fields are added together rather than validated against a clock, so you can type 90 in the seconds box and get a link to 1:30. This is handy when you have a duration in seconds from a transcript or a log and do not want to convert it yourself.

Reading the time off the player

The quickest way to get an accurate figure is to pause at the moment you want and read the elapsed time under the player. A few habits make the result better:

• Aim a second or two early. Landing slightly before the moment gives the viewer a beat of context. Landing mid-word is jarring.
• Use the comma and period keys. With the player focused, those step backward and forward one frame at a time, which is far more precise than dragging the scrubber.
• Watch for chapters. If the video has chapters, the player shows the chapter name as you scrub. Linking to the start of a chapter is usually cleaner than an arbitrary second.

Examples

A start time of zero produces a plain link with no t parameter, because there is nothing to skip.

Where timestamp links behave differently

A few situations are worth knowing about before you rely on one:

• Shorts ignore the start time. Shorts are built to loop from the beginning, so a t value on a Shorts link has no effect. Use the regular watch URL for the same video if you need to land partway in.
• Embeds use a different parameter. Inside an <iframe> the player reads start, not t. If you are embedding rather than sharing, the Embed Code Generator writes the right one.
• Live streams count from the beginning of the recording. Once a stream has ended and become a normal video, timestamps work as usual. While it is still live, the offset is measured from the start of the broadcast.
• Past the end of the video and the player simply starts at the beginning, so a wrong figure fails quietly rather than visibly.

Use cases

• Answering a question with a source. Point at the 30 seconds where something is explained instead of naming the video and hoping.
• Reviewing a recording. Send a colleague the exact moments in a meeting or demo recording that need a decision.
• Citing a talk. In notes, documentation or a bug report, a link to the precise second is a much stronger reference than a title.
• Teaching. Give students a list of moments to watch inside a long lecture rather than the whole thing.

If you want to add a full chapter list to your own video description rather than share individual moments, that is a different job. To pull the video ID out of a messy link first, use the Video ID Extractor.

Privacy

This tool is pure string work. Your link is read on your own device, the video ID is pulled out of it, and the new address is assembled from that ID plus the numbers you typed. No part of it travels anywhere, and the page makes no outgoing call while you use it.

That means neither the link you paste nor the link you build is uploaded or kept. The only thing recorded is an anonymous tally of how the tool behaved, such as whether a link was produced or which kind of input problem came up. Those tallies carry no URL, no video ID and no start time, so there is nothing in them that could identify the video you were working with.