How to save a YouTube Short

If the Short is yours

This is the clean case, it's officially supported, and it explicitly covers Shorts rather than just regular videos.

On a computer: YouTube Studio → Content → select the video → Menu → Download.

On a phone, in either the YouTube app or the YouTube Studio app: your profile picture → Your Videos → the Shorts tab → Menu → Save to device. The separate Shorts tab is the giveaway that this is meant to work for Shorts.

What you get is an MP4 at 720p or 360p depending on the size of the video — not your original master. If you still have the file you uploaded, that one is better than anything you can get back out.

Four reasons the download button won't work

YouTube lists these plainly, and the third catches Shorts creators constantly:

• The video has been removed from YouTube.
• It has a copyright or Community Guidelines strike against it. (A strike — a Content ID claim is a different thing and isn't listed.)
• It uses a preapproved audio track. If you made the Short with a song from YouTube's in-app music library, this is almost certainly why you can't download it.
• You've already downloaded it five times in the last 24 hours. That's the cap: five per video per day.

Google Takeout, for the better file

Takeout exports your own uploads at higher quality than the Studio button — Google's wording is that videos come out in their original format, or as MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio. YouTube's own help page points you at Takeout when you want the better copy, which tells you how the two compare.

One trap: if the channel is a Brand Account, you have to switch to that account inside Takeout or the videos simply won't appear in the export, and it looks like they're missing rather than like you're in the wrong place.

Google doesn't call Shorts out by name in the Takeout documentation. They are ordinary uploads on your channel, so they come with the rest of your uploads — but that's reasoning from how Shorts work, not a sentence Google has published.

Someone else's Short: what YouTube actually offers

There is no download button on a Short the way there is under a regular video. What Premium does instead is Smart Downloads for Shorts: it automatically keeps a set of recommended Shorts on your device for offline viewing, without you choosing them. It reached Android in 2024 and iOS in 2025.

It's worth knowing what a Premium download is and isn't. The files are stored encrypted and play only inside the YouTube app — you cannot move one into an editor, a phone gallery or anywhere else. They also expire after 29 days without an internet connection, and after 48 hours in some countries.

Two current caveats. Premium Lite does not cover Shorts — when Lite gained downloads and background play in February 2026, Shorts and music content were explicitly excluded, so a lot of older advice about this is now wrong. And on free accounts, YouTube's page about offline viewing outside Premium is genuinely ambiguous: it singles out India and South Africa as places where some videos can be downloaded, while saying others still need Premium. If you're in either, try it and see; nobody can tell you from the documentation.

Keeping a Short without downloading anything

Usually the real need is "I want to find this again", and for that a download is the wrong tool. From inside the Shorts player, on desktop, Android and iOS: More → Save to playlist, including Watch later. Liking it works too, and shows up in your Liked videos.

The exception: content marked made for kids can't be added to a playlist or Watch later at all. That's a meaningful slice of Shorts, and there's no way around it.

If what you actually want is what was said rather than the video — a claim, a recipe, a figure you want to check — the transcript generator gives you the words as text, which is easier to search and to quote than a video file you'd have to scrub through anyway.

Remix: the official way to reuse part of someone's Short

This is the one most people don't know exists, and it is genuinely sanctioned by YouTube rather than tolerated. Remix lets you build your own Short out of a piece of someone else's, in four modes:

Attribution is automatic: the source is credited in the Sound Library and the original video is linked from the Shorts player. You don't have to add a credit yourself, and you can't quietly remove it.

If you're a creator, note which way the default runs. Remixing is opt-out. Everything you have not specifically excluded is available for other people to sample, including everything you upload from now on. You turn it off per video in YouTube Studio → Content → open the video → the Shorts remixing setting. Worth a decision rather than a discovery.

What YouTube's terms actually say

The relevant sentence is short, and it is worth reading rather than taking second-hand. Under Permissions and Restrictions, the Terms of Service say you are not allowed to “access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, alter, modify or otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content except: (a) as expressly authorized by the Service; or (b) with prior written permission” from YouTube and the rights holders.

Two things follow from that. First, the familiar line that downloading is fine “as long as YouTube gives you a button” is a paraphrase of limb (a), not a quotation — the terms never mention a download button or Premium by name. The Studio download and Premium's offline mode are permitted because they are the Service authorising it, which is exactly why a third-party downloader isn't.

Second, look at the verb list: it starts with reproduce, not just download. That single word is why the next section is shorter than you might expect.

Screen recording isn't a loophole

People reach for screen recording assuming it sits outside the rules because no file is being fetched from YouTube. It doesn't. The clause above bars reproducing Content, and a screen recording is a reproduction. There is no separate, gentler rule for it.

Copyright is a different question from YouTube's terms, and it's worth keeping the two apart. YouTube doesn't decide copyright; courts do, weighing the purpose of the use, the nature of the work, how much was taken, and the effect on the market for it. YouTube's own guidance is blunt on two points: automated systems can't determine fair use, and there are no magic words — writing “no copyright infringement intended” protects nobody.

In practice the risk sits where distribution starts. A copy you keep and never share is a terms-of-service matter. Republishing someone's Short is where copyright liability actually attaches, and whether a portion of it counts as fair use depends on those factors and on where you are. We can't tell you it's fine, and anyone who does without knowing your jurisdiction is guessing.

The option everyone forgets

Ask. Creators are reachable, most of them are flattered, and a permission in writing settles both the terms question and the copyright question at once. If you need someone's Short for a presentation, a compilation or a class, one message is faster than any workaround and it is the only route that leaves you with nothing to worry about.

What we build, and what we don't

We don't offer a Shorts video downloader, and this page is the long version of why. What we do offer for a Short is the part that isn't restricted: its thumbnail, which is a public image at a public address, and its transcript, read through a licensed provider. Both are on the Shorts tools page.

Frequently asked questions

Written September 2026. YouTube changes these features often — Premium Lite's exclusion of Shorts is from February 2026 — so check anything consequential against YouTube's own help pages before relying on it. Nothing here is legal advice.