Can't embed YouTube shorts anymore
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As of today, YouTube seems to have changed the URL structure of their short videos and as a result, they can’t be embedded in a WordPress post anymore. I used to be able to copy the URL into a WordPress post and it would automatically embed the video. Now it only shows the link address, but no video. I can still embed longer videos (not shorts) but they seem to have a different link structure. Will WordPress be providing a work around for this please? I don’t understand why it’s not working now. I use my blog to share my videos and most of them are shorts, so I really need to be able to embed them. Can anyone offer help? Thank you.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Update: I just managed to copy a link from a short video on the desktop version on the YouTube studio website and it worked. It embedded into WordPress as usual. However, when I try this on the YouTube studio app on my phone, or just try to copy the link from YouTube (website/app) it doesn’t work anymore. So, this is a laborious work around. Still wondering why it doesn’t work on my phone as it did only a few days ago. The link structure is different and unable to be embedded on the phone. I do most of my work from the phone. Thank you.
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Very interesting find! I’ve added the tag modlook to your existing list to get the attention of moderators to take a look at your issue.
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Thank you. Much appreciated. I see YouTube have made some changes to the way they present shorts on YouTube and maybe they changed the link structure at the same time? Very frustrating! Thank you.
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FYI, here is what’s going on with the link structure at YouTube’s end. Using my latest video as an example.
Works (embeds in WordPress):
Doesn’t work (doesn’t embed in WP):
https://youtube.com/shorts/h34TfmVpySs?feature=share
YouTube used to give you the first kind of link to copy and paste. Now it only gives the second kind of link and you have to go into the desktop version of YouTube studio to even find this.
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Very strange how they differ. I see two manual solutions present for you though until the WP team improves the embed block.
1) You could use the studio to generate your YouTube videos
2) You can edit your URLs retrieved from the mobile view by removing ‘shorts/’ and the “?feature=share”Really sorry that this inconvenience has put a dent in your blogging experience. Hopefully, moderators will be here soon to give you a better response in the event mine isn’t satisfying.
All the best, I’ll subscribe to keep posted.
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I’ve done a bit of research here on YouTube Shorts and it seems clear from their internal documentation that this new option they offer is still considered to be a “beta” which complicates things as you would guess.
You can see they note this here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10059070
Specifically if you drill down under the “How will viewers find my short videos?” the do mention a few options for sharing the content on other social services, but conspicuously do not offer an option to embed the video within a website that I can see.
I’ve reported this to our engineers so they can take a closer look, but I suspect that until YouTube offers a way to embed these videos into websites (which would give us something to build an embed tool around) there is not much we’ll be able to do to accommodate this new format. Thanks!
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Thank you. It used to be that YT provided two kinds of links and now it’s defaulting to the second kind of link that I mentioned in my post above. So, it used to be easy/manageable, but now that older link structure is tucked away within the desktop version of YT studio only. And that’s the only one that embeds now. Such a hassle when they used to always work! I hope this makes sense. Thank you for looking into it for me. Much appreciated.
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Thanks so much. I appreciate your suggestions. Yes, definitely a work around there by retyping the url, even if it’s tedious. It used to work so smoothly and easily too! Oh well, thanks again.
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Apologies for not @ people in my two replies above. I’m new to this. The first of my last two replies were for @staff-totoro and then @hughfordb123
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I am happy to see that this has been reviewed by a moderator. My pleasure!
Happy Blogging! :-)
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Hi there,
Just to be clear, while we’ve opened a feature request for this, if the default link that Youtube generates for Shorts doesn’t support oEmbed on their end, there’s nothing we can do on ours to make it embeddable. Youtube would need to declare embed support for those links in their platform before it will be possible to embed those videos anywhere else.
Once they do make those links embeddable, support for it in WordPress will have to come from the folks who make the editor over on WordPress.org, before it will become available on WordPress.com.
For now, the workaround @hughfordb123 suggested is the only option. I’m adding detailed instructions and a GIF on how to do it below in case it can help anyone else (the GIF shows the browser editor on my computer, but it works the same in the mobile browser as well. The process also works in the mobile app; editing the link is just a little different there, as the link appears at the bottom of the screen instead of inside the block.)
1) Copy the link from the Youtube app
2) In the editor on your site, explicitly create a new block and select the Youtube block
3) Paste in the link
4) Remove theshorts/from the link and prependwatch?v=to the unique code
5) Click “Embed” and the video should embed.
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