Best Time to Post YouTube Shorts

The best time to post YouTube Shorts is a little before your own viewers are most active on YouTube, and YouTube tells you when that is. It publishes no universal best hour. The "best times" lists online average other channels, with other audiences in other time zones. A report in YouTube Studio shows when your viewers are on YouTube; post a little ahead of those hours, check the results, and you will do better than any list.

Below: where to find that report, how to read it, how to turn it into a weekly schedule, and how to test whether the time is what holds your Shorts back.

Why there is no one right hour

The Shorts feed is not a timeline. Someone swiping through it sees videos YouTube picks for them, not the newest upload from every channel they follow, which limits what timing can do.

• Timing affects the first audience, not the whole life of a Short. The first people who can see a new Short are the ones on YouTube when it goes out. If your viewers are asleep, the first hours are quieter. After that, a Short people watch keeps being shown, whatever hour it went up.
• Your viewers are not the average viewer. A channel about late night gaming streams and a channel for parents of toddlers do not share an evening. A creator in Lisbon with viewers in Texas has a six hour gap to plan around. A chart built from thousands of other channels averages all of that away.
• Topic beats the clock when the topic is news. If your Short reacts to something that happened today, posting it today matters more than posting at 6 pm.

The question worth asking, then, is when your viewers are on YouTube and whether posting at those hours changes anything for your channel.

Where to find your viewers' active hours

In YouTube Studio, open Analytics; the Audience tab has a report called When your viewers are on YouTube. YouTube says it "shows you when your viewers are online across YouTube in the last 28 days" (YouTube Help). It is a grid of days and hours, with darker cells where more of your viewers are on YouTube.

For Shorts, note two things:

1. It counts your Shorts viewers. YouTube says that viewers "who watch any form of your channel's content will be included in viewer metrics. This includes Shorts" (YouTube Help). It describes the people who watch you, not everyone on YouTube.
2. It looks back 28 days. A holiday, a viral video or a change in what you post can shift it, so look again every few weeks.

A new channel with few viewers gives the grid little to go on. Start instead from where your viewers probably live (the geography data in your analytics, or your own sense of who watches), pick evening hours in that time zone as a first guess, and test it as below.

How to read the grid

Look for a pattern, not a single dark cell.

• Find the block of darkest hours on most days. For many channels it is an evening band, but yours may be a lunch hour, a commute or late at night.
• Note the weekday differences. If weekends are darker than weekdays, or one weekday stands out, post your strongest Short on that day.
• Aim a little before the peak. A Short posted just ahead of the band is already out when most viewers arrive, rather than an hour after they started scrolling.
• Write down two or three slots. A slot is a day and an hour, such as Tuesday 6 pm or Saturday 11 am. Those slots become your schedule.

Pick slots you can actually keep. If you post three Shorts a week, three good slots are enough.

Turn the slots into a schedule

Once you know the hour, the hard part is having a finished Short ready at that hour, every time, without dropping what you are doing to upload it. It helps to make a batch of Shorts at once and schedule them all in one sitting. Auk Video does both from your own long video.

1. Make a batch of clips. Open Home, paste a link to your video and press Get clips, or press Upload a file and choose it. Leave Clip length on Auto, or pick a range, then press Make clips. Auk Video reads the transcript, finds moments that stand on their own, reframes each one to vertical and captions it.
2. Pick the ones worth posting. Each clip gets a score from 0 to 100 that rates the moment as a clip; it does not predict views. Watch them and keep the ones that land. If you need more than one batch to fill a week, run a second video.
3. Tighten each clip. In the editor, Remove silences shortens long pauses in one click and Trim moves the start and end. A Short that gets to the point loses fewer people in its first seconds, whatever time it goes out. For how long a Short should run, see How long can a YouTube Short be?.
4. Connect your channel once. Open the account menu at the bottom of the sidebar, click Profile, and under Channels press Connect next to YouTube Shorts.
5. Schedule each clip to one of your slots. Press Publish on a clip, pick your YouTube channel under Post to, check the Title, then under When pick Schedule and set the date and time. Press Schedule.
6. Set the time in your viewers' time zone. The time you type is in your own time zone. If your viewers are somewhere else, click the offset at the end of the field and pick their zone, then type the hour straight from your slot list, with no conversion.
7. Keep posts from stacking. If you already have posts that day, the line beside the Schedule button lists their times, so you can spot a clash before you make it.
8. Check the week. The Publishing page in the sidebar shows every scheduled post. Its Week view is an hour grid you can hold up against your slots, and you can drag a post to another hour or day to move it.

Publishing your clips covers each step in more detail, including the TikTok and Instagram Reels options if the same clip goes to more than one place. Publishing and scheduling never use credits.

Before you rely on this, know one limit: today, a Short that Auk Video posts to YouTube goes up as private on your channel until YouTube approves Auk Video, and you make it public in YouTube Studio. Instagram Reels post publicly at the scheduled time. The post window says which applies under each channel's name.

Test whether the time matters for you

Once you have a schedule, find out whether it helps. Most channels never check, and keep following a time from a list for months.

1. Change one thing at a time. Keep the kind of Short the same and move only the hour. Change the topic, the length and the time in the same week and you learn nothing about the time.
2. Run each slot for a few weeks. A single Short tells you little, because some do well and some do not whatever hour they go out.
3. Compare like with like. Put Shorts at your usual hour next to Shorts at the new hour, from the same kind of video.
4. Read the numbers in one place. In Auk Video's Publishing page, the List view shows each post under Posted with its views and likes when the platform reports them. YouTube Studio's analytics go further, with how many viewers stayed past the opening of each Short.
5. Keep the slot that wins, and move on. If two hours perform the same, the time is not what limits your Shorts; spend the effort on the clips themselves.

Two hours performing the same is a common result. When the time does not matter, the opening seconds, the moment you picked and the captions usually do; What makes a great clip covers those.

A simple weekly plan

A starting point to adjust, not a rule:

• Once a month: open When your viewers are on YouTube, note the darkest band, and update your slots.
• Once a week: run one or two of your long videos through Auk Video, pick the best clips, tighten them, and schedule them into the week's slots.
• Every few weeks: look at Posted in the List view and compare your slots. Drop the weak one, try a new one.

No posting time guarantees views, and nobody can promise them. A good slot gives a Short that deserves it a fair first hour, every time, and you do not have to be at your desk when it goes out.

Common questions

Is there a best time to post YouTube Shorts for everyone?

No. YouTube does not publish one, and the hours your viewers are on YouTube depend on who they are and where they live. The When your viewers are on YouTube report in YouTube Studio, under Analytics and Audience, shows the hours for your own channel over the last 28 days.

Does the day of the week matter for Shorts?

It can. Some audiences are more active on weekends, some on weekdays. The same report shows each day separately, so check whether one day is clearly darker than the others before you decide.

Should I post Shorts at the same time every day?

You can, though it is not required. A regular time is easier to keep to, and your viewers get a new Short when they tend to be around. It matters more that each slot sits in or just before the hours your viewers are active.

What time zone should I schedule in?

Your viewers' time zone, not yours. In Auk Video the schedule field starts in your own zone; click the offset at the end of it to pick theirs, and type the hour from your slot list as it is.

Why did my Short get views days after I posted it?

The Shorts feed shows a video to viewers YouTube expects to like it, not only in the hours after upload. For the same reason, the posting time matters most for the first audience and less for a Short that keeps being watched.