You’re watching a twenty-minute video essay about the fall of the Roman Empire, but there is this one specific thirty-second clip where the narrator's cat knocks over a bust of Nero. You want to show your friend. You don’t want them to scrub through eighteen minutes of dry historical dates to find the feline chaos. Honestly, most people just send the link and text "go to 18:12," but that’s an amateur move. It’s clunky. Half the time, your friend won't even bother clicking if they think they have to do the manual labor of hunting for the highlight. Learning how to share a YouTube video with a timestamp is basically a digital superpower that saves everyone’s time.
It’s actually way easier than it looks, yet Google is littered with outdated advice from five years ago. Whether you are on a desktop, huddling over a smartphone, or trying to bypass the YouTube app’s weird UI limitations, there are at least three distinct ways to nail the timing.
The Desktop Shortcut Everyone Misses
If you are on a laptop or a PC, you have the easiest path. It is almost too simple. You just pause the video where you want it to start. Right-click anywhere on the video player itself. A dark gray menu pops up—you’ve seen it a thousand times—but you probably ignored the second option. It literally says "Copy video URL at current time." Click that. You’re done.
But sometimes, for reasons known only to the Google engineers, that right-click menu doesn't show up. Maybe you have a browser extension blocking it or you accidentally right-clicked on an ad overlay. In that case, look at the "Share" button sitting right under the video title. When you click it, a little pop-up appears with the social icons. At the very bottom, there’s a tiny checkbox that says "Start at" followed by the timestamp. Check that box. The URL in the box above it will instantly change, adding a little snippet of code at the end. Copy that link. It’s foolproof.
Cracking the Mobile Code
Mobile is where things get annoying. The YouTube app on iOS and Android—infuriatingly—does not have a "Share at current time" button. It feels like a massive oversight. You click share, you hit copy link, and it just gives you the raw URL for the start of the video. If you're on the go, you have to do a little bit of manual "hacking" to the URL. It’s not hard, but you have to remember the syntax.
Essentially, you take the link you just copied and add ?t=1m30s to the end of it. Or if it’s just seconds, ?t=90s.
Wait, there’s a nuance here. If the YouTube URL already has a question mark in it (which happens sometimes with long-form tracking links), you have to use an ampersand instead of a question mark. So it would be &t=1m30s. If you see a ? already, use &. If you don't see a ?, use ?. It’s a tiny bit of URL logic that makes the difference between a working link and a broken one.
Why Timestamps Matter for Content Creators
If you are a creator, this isn't just about sharing funny cat moments with your buddies. It is about retention. If you're linking to a specific reference in a long-form podcast or a tutorial, sending a user to the exact second you mention a product or a concept is crucial.
Think about the user experience.
When a viewer clicks a link and it starts exactly where the value is, they feel respected. Their time is being valued. On the flip side, forcing someone to watch a three-minute intro they didn't ask for is the fastest way to get them to bounce off your site or out of your chat.
There’s also the "Chapters" feature. YouTube started auto-generating these a while back, or creators can add them manually in the description. If a video has chapters, you can often click the chapter title, and the URL in your browser’s address bar will automatically update with the timestamp. You can just copy the URL directly from the address bar at that point.
The Manual String Method: A Cheat Sheet
For those who want to be precise, especially when dealing with hours-long livestreams or gaming walkthroughs, the manual string is your best friend.
- For seconds only: Add
?t=120(this starts at 2 minutes). - For minutes and seconds: Add
?t=2m15s. - For hours, minutes, and seconds: Add
?t=1h2m10s.
It is worth noting that YouTube’s system is pretty flexible. It usually understands what you mean even if you just put the total number of seconds. If you put ?t=3600, it will jump exactly to the one-hour mark.
Troubleshooting the "It Won't Jump" Problem
Occasionally, you’ll send a timestamped link and your friend will complain that it started at the beginning anyway. This usually happens for two reasons. First, the ads. Sometimes, if a "Pre-roll" ad is particularly aggressive, it can override the timestamp trigger in the mobile app. The ad plays, and then the app "forgets" it was supposed to jump to 4:05.
Second, check your syntax. A single missing letter or an extra space will break the code. The t must be lowercase. If you use a capital T, it might fail. If you put a space between the = and the number, it will definitely fail.
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Embedding with a Start Time
Maybe you aren't texting a link. Maybe you’re a blogger or you're building a page for work. You want to embed the video, but you want it to play from a specific point immediately when the user hits play. This requires a slightly different approach than the share link.
When you get the "Embed" code (the <iframe> stuff), you need to look at the src URL. It looks like youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID. You have to append ?start=90 to that URL inside the quotes. Note that for embeds, YouTube usually prefers seconds rather than the 1m30s format.
So, if you want it to start at 2 minutes, the code inside your iframe should end with ?start=120.
Practical Next Steps
Now that you know the manual and automatic ways to handle this, stop sending raw links. It’s cluttered.
- On Desktop: Always use the right-click "Copy at current time" method. It’s the cleanest.
- On Mobile: Copy the link, paste it into your message, and manually type
?t=followed by the time before you hit send. - For Professional Use: If you are citing a video in an article, use the "Start at" checkbox in the share menu to ensure the link is generated correctly by YouTube's own servers.
Mastering these tiny tweaks makes you a better digital communicator. It's the difference between saying "Hey, check this out" and actually showing someone exactly what you want them to see. Give it a shot on the next long video you find—your friends will thank you for not making them hunt for the good part.