How to Share a YouTube Video at a Specific Time

Sending someone a 90-minute talk and telling them 'the good bit is around 40 minutes in' wastes their time. A timestamped link opens at the moment you mean. There are three ways to make one, and they are not equivalent.

Method 1: YouTube's own share dialog

Pause at the moment you want, press Share, and tick the 'Start at' checkbox. YouTube fills in the current position. This is the fastest route when you are already watching on a desktop, and the least precise, because you get whatever second you happened to pause on.

Method 2: adding the parameter by hand

Both of these forms work, and the value is in seconds:

• https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID?t=90
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID&t=90

The trap is the separator. On a watch URL the parameter must be joined with & because ?v= already started the query string; writing ?t= a second time silently breaks it. The short youtu.be form has no other parameters, so it uses ?t=.

Method 3: a timestamp generator

A generator is worth it when you want exact control, when you are producing several links, or when you want the shareable text as well as the URL. You type the hours, minutes and seconds; it handles the format, the separator and the playlist parameter.

Keeping or dropping the playlist

A URL copied while watching inside a playlist carries a list parameter. Keeping it preserves the playlist context — good when the next video matters. Dropping it produces a clean single-video link — better when you are pointing at one specific moment and nothing else.

Why some links lose their timestamp

Chat apps, email clients and link shorteners sometimes rewrite URLs and drop query parameters. The short youtu.be?t= form survives this more often than the long watch form, so prefer it for anything you are pasting into a messaging app.

Chapters are a different thing

A timestamp link points into a video from outside. Chapters are timestamps inside the video's own description, and YouTube only recognises them when the list starts at 0:00, contains at least three entries, and each chapter runs for at least ten seconds. Getting one of those rules wrong means the chapter bar silently does not appear — which is why it is worth validating the list before you paste it.