Best time to post YouTube Shorts
Shorts want a shorter head start than long-form. Set your country and your audience's, and get the window in your own local time.
Work out your Shorts upload window
Your own time zone comes from your browser — nothing is sent anywhere.
Times below are in United States local time. Your own local time is added once the page loads.
| Day | Audience is watching | Upload at (United States) | Which is (your time) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Weekday midday · 12:00–14:00 Weekday early evening · 16:00–18:00 Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00 | 11:15–12:45 15:15–16:45 17:15–18:45 | |
| Tuesday | Weekday midday · 12:00–14:00 Weekday early evening · 16:00–18:00 Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00 | 11:15–12:45 15:15–16:45 17:15–18:45 | |
| Wednesday | Weekday midday · 12:00–14:00 Weekday early evening · 16:00–18:00 Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00 | 11:15–12:45 15:15–16:45 17:15–18:45 | |
| Thursday | Weekday midday · 12:00–14:00 Weekday early evening · 16:00–18:00 Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00 | 11:15–12:45 15:15–16:45 17:15–18:45 | |
| Friday | Weekday midday · 12:00–14:00 Weekday early evening · 16:00–18:00 Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00 | 11:15–12:45 15:15–16:45 17:15–18:45 | |
| Saturdayweekend | Weekend late morning · 10:00–13:00 Weekend evening · 17:00–22:00 | 09:15–10:45 16:15–17:45 | |
| Sundayweekend | Weekend late morning · 10:00–13:00 Weekend evening · 17:00–22:00 | 09:15–10:45 16:15–17:45 |
Monday to Friday share a shape, and so do Saturday and Sunday: the model distinguishes weekdays from weekends and nothing finer. Inventing a different peak for Wednesday would be inventing data. Each day is still converted on its own real date, so a week containing a clock change is correct row by row.
Why Shorts are timed differently
The advice on this page is not the long-form advice with a different heading. It differs in two specific ways, and both come from the same fact: Shorts are found in a feed, and long-form is found through search, suggestions and subscriptions.
A shorter head start. Published about forty-five minutes ahead. The Shorts feed leans on freshness far more than search does, so a long head start works against you. Short enough to still be new when the peak arrives, long enough to be processed and in circulation. Long-form goes out 3 hours or so ahead of the same peak, for the opposite reason.
More windows worth using. A lunch break is a real gap in the day, but a short one. It suits something watchable in a single sitting and does not suit a twenty-minute upload, so the midday window appears in the tables below and is deliberately absent from the long-form page.
Recommended Shorts windows, in your audience's local time
Independent of where you are — this is the shape of an ordinary day wherever your audience is. Use the converter above to put it on your own clock.
Shorts, weekday
| When your audience is watching | Upload window (audience local time) |
|---|---|
| Weekday midday · 12:00–14:00A real but shorter break. Good for something watchable in one sitting, which is why it suits Shorts better than a twenty-minute upload. | 11:15–12:45 |
| Weekday early evening · 16:00–18:00The gap between finishing and settling in — travelling, waiting, half-watching. Attention is available but divided. | 15:15–16:45 |
| Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00The largest reliable block of free attention in a working day. Work and school are over, the phone is out, and nothing else is scheduled. | 17:15–18:45 |
Shorts, weekend
| When your audience is watching | Upload window (audience local time) |
|---|---|
| Weekend late morning · 10:00–13:00Weekends start later and the morning is unhurried, so the first peak arrives hours earlier than it does on a weekday. | 09:15–10:45 |
| Weekend evening · 17:00–22:00Broader and flatter than a weekday evening: people are free earlier and stay up later, so the window is wider rather than sharper. | 16:15–17:45 |
How this is calculated
There is no public dataset of the best times to post on YouTube. The figures that circulate come either from one scheduling vendor’s own customers or from other articles quoting each other, and none of them know anything about your channel. So this page does not start from a table of best times. It starts from two things that can be argued with:
One — people watch on a schedule. Not a precise one, but a real one: a large block of attention in the evening once work and school are done, a smaller one around lunch, and a later, flatter shape at the weekend. That is stated in the audience’s own local time, which is the only frame in which it means anything.
Two — a video needs a head start. Publishing at the exact moment your audience arrives means arriving with nothing: no watch time, no click-through, nothing for YouTube to judge it on while the audience is actually there. Publishing earlier means the peak finds a video that already has signal.
The recommendation is the second applied to the first: take the window when the audience shows up, and move backwards by the head start the format needs.
- Shorts. Published about forty-five minutes ahead. The Shorts feed leans on freshness far more than search does, so a long head start works against you. Short enough to still be new when the peak arrives, long enough to be processed and in circulation.
- Long-form video. Published about two and a half hours before the audience arrives. Long-form is surfaced by search, suggested videos and subscriptions, all of which react to early watch time — so it helps to already have some when the peak starts. It also leaves room for processing to finish, which on a long upload is not instant.
Everything after that is arithmetic — and the arithmetic is the part creators actually get wrong, because the gap between two countries is not a fixed number. It changes when either side puts its clocks forward, and those dates do not line up. This page recalculates it every time you open it rather than storing an offset. More on why that matters.
Questions
What is the best time to post YouTube Shorts?
Closer to the moment your audience is actually watching than you would publish a long-form video — roughly forty-five minutes before the peak rather than a couple of hours. The Shorts feed leans heavily on how recent something is, so arriving early means arriving stale.
Why is the timing advice for Shorts different from long-form?
They are found in different ways. A long-form video is surfaced by search, suggested videos and the subscriptions feed, all of which respond to how it performed in its first hour — so publishing before the peak gives it something to show. Shorts are served from a feed that treats freshness as a signal in its own right, so the same head start is a handicap.
Does posting Shorts at lunchtime work?
It is worth trying in a way it is not for long-form. A lunch break is a real gap but a short one, which suits something watchable in a single sitting far better than a twenty-minute upload. That is why this page recommends midday windows for Shorts and the long-form page does not.
How many Shorts should I post per day?
This tool has nothing useful to say about that, and neither does anyone quoting a number without knowing your channel. It answers one question: given when your audience watches, when should an upload go live. Frequency is a separate decision.
Do Shorts posted at the wrong time still get views?
Often, yes. Shorts are distributed by a feed rather than by a subscription list, so a Short can find an audience long after it was published. Timing shifts the odds at the start; it does not decide the outcome.