Download YouTube Shorts to your phone

Shorts scroll past quickly, and unlike a regular YouTube video, there's no built-in download option sitting in the menu. If you want to keep one — to rewatch offline, repost, or use in an edit — you need to go through a separate tool, and the steps differ slightly by phone.

Step 1: Find the Share option

On the Short itself, tap the Share icon (the arrow, usually in the bottom-right area of the screen) and choose Copy link. This works the same in the YouTube app on both iPhone and Android.

Step 2: Paste it into the downloader

Open the YouTube Shorts downloader, paste the link, and tap Download. The link will look like youtube.com/shorts/...; a shortened youtu.be/... link works too if that's what got copied.

Saving on iPhone

Once the download finishes, open it in Safari and tap the Share icon at the bottom, then choose Save Video to add it to your Photos app. If the link opened inside the YouTube app's own browser instead of Safari, back out and open it in Safari directly — the same in-app browser restriction that affects other platforms applies here too.

Saving on Android

On Android, the downloaded file typically lands directly in your Downloads folder, and most phones' gallery apps pick it up automatically within a few seconds. If it doesn't show up in the gallery, check your file manager app's Downloads folder directly — the file is there even if the gallery hasn't indexed it yet.

Shorts versus regular YouTube videos

A Short is really just a YouTube video published in a vertical format under 3 minutes — there's no separate underlying system. That means the same YouTube video downloader handles regular uploads too, so you don't need a different tool depending on which format a creator used.

Common reasons a Short won't download

If the link doesn't produce a result, the most common cause is that the Short has been deleted or set to private since it was shared with you — check whether it still plays normally inside the YouTube app first. Age-restricted content tied to a signed-in account is the other common blocker, since the tool can only fetch what's publicly viewable without logging in.

Keeping the audio only

If a Short's audio is what you actually want — a sound clip or trending audio — the download options include an MP3 choice alongside the video formats, so there's no need to separately record or extract it after the fact.

Saving multiple Shorts in one sitting

There's no batch option, so each Short needs its own copy-paste-download cycle — but because the process only takes a few seconds per video, saving five or six Shorts from a creator you follow is realistically a two-minute task rather than something that needs a dedicated bulk tool.

Editing a downloaded Short

Since the file saves as a standard vertical MP4, it opens directly in any video editing app on iPhone or Android — useful if you want to trim it, add captions, or splice it into a longer compilation before reposting elsewhere.

Shorts made from existing longer videos

Some Shorts are clipped by YouTube's own editor from a creator's longer upload. These download exactly the same way as an original Short — the tool doesn't need to know or care how the video was produced, only that the link points to a public Shorts page.

Shorts that never finish processing

If a download seems to hang indefinitely, double-check the link is actually a Shorts URL and not a link to the creator's channel page — pasting a channel link instead of a specific video link is the most common reason nothing happens after tapping Download.

Do downloaded Shorts keep their original captions?

The video file itself is unaffected by on-screen captions or text overlays the creator added, since those are baked into the video during upload — whatever appears when you watch the Short in the app will appear the same way in the downloaded file.

One more thing worth knowing

A Short that was just uploaded moments ago can occasionally fail on the first attempt simply because YouTube hasn't finished processing it yet — trying again after a short wait usually resolves it without needing to do anything differently.

Rewatching Shorts without an internet connection

Once saved locally, a Short plays back like any other video file on the phone — no YouTube app, account, or connection required, which is the main reason people bother downloading them in the first place rather than just replaying from the feed.

Shorts from channels you don't subscribe to

Subscription status has no effect on whether a Short can be downloaded — the tool only cares whether the video is public, not whether your account (if you're signed into YouTube at all) follows the channel that posted it.