YouTube is expanding the availability of YouTube Shorts to all content creators in the US. This comes a couple of months after the company first rolled out YouTube Shorts in beta to selected users in the country.
Apart from the wider availability, YouTube is also adding a couple of new camera features to Shorts.
YouTube Shorts Will Now Support 60-Second Clips
YouTube Shorts first launched in India in September 2020. Six months later, the company brought its bite-sized TikTok competitor to the US, albeit in beta to selected creators. Now though, YouTube has announced that it is opening YouTube Shorts to all creators in the US. The feature will be rolled out within the next week to all. The company did not provide any details about the availability of YouTube Shorts outside of the US though.
Additionally, YouTube is also adding new features to YouTube Shorts. This includes support for 60-second videos, new filters and effects, and captions support for enhanced accessibility.
Creators will see an option to record 60-second long Short videos alongside the already available option to record 15-second clips. However, the long videos are going to have some limitations. You will not be able to add music to them from the YouTube library. This will only be available for 15-second clips.
As for the new filters and effects, they will allow creators to color correct their videos or change the "vibe" as per their liking. YouTube plans to roll out additional filters and effects in the coming year.
Caption support is also being rolled out to YouTube Shorts, with captions automatically being added to all videos. Creators will have the option of adding them manually as well.
To help improve the discoverability of YouTube Shorts, YouTube is adding a dedicated Shorts tab in its iPhone and Android app. This will appear on the bottom tab bar and replace the Explore tab. The Explore option will be moving to the top-left corner of the app, and it will help you find trending videos on popular topics.
YouTube Shorts Takes On TikTok With Wider Availability
YouTube Shorts is YouTube's take on short-form videos that are primarily short in portrait mode. The service was first launched in India, where YouTube claims it has been a massive success garnering over 3.5 billion daily global views.
The US is one of the largest markets for TikTok. By rolling out YouTube Shorts to all in the country, YouTube would be better poised to take on its competitor.