How to Upload a Video to YouTube from PC and iPhone

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How to Upload a Video to YouTube from PC and iPhone

Last Updated: 2022. 08. 23

With 2 billion active users daily worldwide, YouTube is the most popular and a highly-engaged social platform. Creating your own YouTube channel and keeping uploading engaging videos will open up new opportunities for business and brand building.

So, here we will walk you through how to upload a video to YouTube from PC and iPhone and offer you insider tips as to how to customize detailed settings for your YouTube videos and 2 great tools to create and upload compelling YouTube videos.

Here’s What You Will Learn:

How to Upload a Video to YouTube from PC

How to Upload a Video to YouTube from iPhone

2 Bonus Tools for YouTube Success

How to Upload a Video to YouTube from PC

Overall, there are 5 steps to upload a video to YouTube from your computer in 2022:

Step 1

Upload: Upload videos to YouTube Studio from the web

Step 2

Add Details: Add title, description, thumbnail, tags, etc.

Step 3

Video Elements: Add subtitles, end screen, cards.

Step 4

Checks: Check for copyright issues in the video content

Step 5

Visibility: Select how to publish a YouTube video, such as a private video, an unlisted video or as a public video or a scheduled video.

So, let’s break down these 5 steps in detail.

1. Upload a Video to YouTube

Step 1

Visit YouTube’s Home Page and Log into Your YouTube Account

Step 2

Click on the “Create” Icon on the Top Right Corner and Select “Upload Video”

Upload a video to YouTube Studio

Step 3

Select a Video File to Upload to YouTube

Drag and drop video files to upload, then the auto-upload will begin. You may also upload up to 15 videos in batch at a time. Your bandwidth and the physical size of your video will decide how long does it take to upload a video to YouTube.

Pop-up window to upload video files to YouTube

2. Add Details

Once your video is successfully uploaded to YouTube Studio, then you can add details to enhance the viewing experience for YouTube audiences. Follow us to go through this cover step meanwhile we will offer you some proven strategies.

Step 1

Video Title

The key is to make your title look compelling, clickable to viewers. You can sparkle audiences’ curiosity or address one of their pain points.

You may include some keywords viewers are likely to use for certain topics but don’t do keyword stuffing. Keep it short and sweet.

Create a title for your YouTube video

Step 2

Description

The description is a summary of your video content and will be shown below your title and a snippet of it will be displayed next to the thumbnail in YouTube’s search result.

Add descriptions to a YouTube video

You may highlight what this video is about. If it’s a long tutorial video, you can add a timestamp to help viewers watch the parts of the video they find most interesting.

Here is an example:

00:00 Intro

00:20 Why you should visit Iceland

00:52 Where are 3 best places to visit in Iceland

01:29 How to plan your visit

Since the first 1-2 sentences or the initial 126 characters of your description will be shown in the search research in YouTube beside your Thumbnail, do your best to make them pitch your video and engaging.

Give attribution to the music you use in the video or people you work with to create this video. Check the 4 best sites to get free YouTube background music.

Add 1-2 clickable links for viewers to learn more information or drive traffic to your website. Do it sparingly and wisely.

Step 3

Thumbnail

Thumbnail or cover photo is of primary importance to grab viewers’ eyes and click your video. Although YouTube can randomly capture 3 photos of your video for a thumbnail, we highly recommend that you create a custom thumbnail and upload it for your video thumbnail.

Create and upload a custom thumbnail for a YouTube video

Proven Strategies:

1. Have your face shown in the thumbnail for statistics have shown that thumbnails with a face get more clicks than those without a face. Besides, place minimal around 3-5 words next to your face.

2. Use bold words and add bright text borders in the thumbnail to make it scroll-stopping.

3. The best YouTube thumbnail size: 1280 × 720 pixels; 16:9 aspect ratio

YouTube thumbnails with faces and eye-catching words and elements

Step 4

Playlist

If you have uploaded many videos on similar topics, you can create a playlist and group them to this playlist, let’s say all your video tutorials, so viewers can easily browse through multiple videos in a list. Meanwhile, you can display such a playlist on your YouTube homepage.

Step 5

Audience

You are expected to select whether your video content is appropriate for kids to view, according to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). You may also set an age restriction for viewers over 18.

Normally, select “No, it’s not made for kids” to reach broader viewers.

Step 6

Paid Promotion

If your YouTube video content contains a promo product or services sponsored by a third party, you may check this selection. So, YouTube will let viewers know that your video involves a paid promotion.

Step 7

Automatic Chapters

Video chapters break a long video into different small segments. So viewers can easily watch the information they want. You can check the “All Automatic Chapters” leave it for YouTube to do the job.

However, it’s highly advisable to manually add timestamps in the description box in the format below:

Add chapters to a YouTube video

00:00 FlexClip Video Editing Tutorial

01:43 How to create a project on FlexClip

02:52 FlexClip interface

03:48 How to edit footage on FlexClip

So, YouTube will automatically divide the entire video into different chapters for an easier watch. Remember, the minimum length for video chapters is 10 secs.

Step 8

3. Video Elements

Video elements aim to enhance the viewing experience of your YouTube videos. You can add subtitles, and interactive video content like an end screen or cards to show viewers related videos, websites, or call-to-actions.

Add video elements to a YouTube video

Add Subtitles. You can add subtitles to make it easier for native-speaking or foreign audiences or viewers with hearing impairment to follow your video content. Check how to add bilingual subtitles to videos.

Add an End Screen. Add related videos worth watching for viewers at the end of a video. To use this feature, your video must be at least 25 secs long.

Add Cards. Add interactive content during your video

4. Checks

Literally, on this page, YouTube will automatically screen your video for copyright issues, such as the YouTube background music used in your video. If nothing goes wrong, simply hit the “Next” button.

Check copyright issues of your YouTube videos

5. Visibility

Here, you have 4 options to decide how you want to publish your YouTube video:

Select how you want to publish a YouTube video

Private. Publish a private YouTube video that only you and chosen people can watch your video.

Unlisted. This is a tricky private YouTube video. An unlisted YouTube video won’t show up on your YouTube channel’s homepage or in the search result. People can only watch an unlisted video if they know the video link or browse a webpage with this video link or the embedded code.

Public. Publish a public video that everyone can watch on your YouTube channel.

Schedule. Set the date and time when to make your video to be published to the public.

Finally, press the “Publish” button, then your YouTube video is successfully uploaded and displayed on your YouTube channel. If you don’t choose any other these 5 options, your uploaded video will be saved as a draft.

How to Upload a Video to YouTube from iPhone

To upload a video to YouTube from iPhone, you need to download YouTube’s mobile app first and the rest is easy peasy lemon squeezy.

1. Launch YouTube mobile app and Log into Your YouTube Account

2. Tap the “+” Button in the Middle

Tap the YouTube video upload button

3. Select and Upload an Existing Video From Your Camera Roll

Upload a 9:16 video to create a YouTube Short

Upload a 16:9 video to create a YouTube Video

Upload a YouTube video by YouTube mobile app

If you want to live stream on YouTube, just tap “Go Live”. Here, let’s tap “Upload a video” to create a normal YouTube video.

4. Tap Next

Here, you can preview the video to be uploaded. Just tap “Next”.

5. Add Details to the Video and Tap Next

Add details to a YouTube video on YouTube mobile app

Add Title

Add Description

Customize Video Visibility (public, unlisted, private, or scheduled video)

Add Location (optional)

Add to Playlist (optional)

6. Select Audience and Publish

Decide whether your video is made for kids or not or is it necessary to restrict your video to viewers over 18. Finally, tap “Upload Video” to publish the video on YouTube. Done.

Select audience and upload a YouTube video

2 Bonus Tools for YouTube Success

To take your YouTube videos to the next level both in creating and uploading, we’d also like to recommend two user-friendly tools to you: one is a feature-packed online YouTube video maker, the other is an expert YouTube SEO tool.

1. FlexClip

For YouTube content creators, FlexClip online video maker is a treasure trove to create scroll-stopping YouTube video content and upload it from PC to YouTube in a breeze.

Use the feature-rich FlexClip online video maker to edit and upload videos to YouTube

Create Now

With FlexClip, you can：

Select from a wide array of YouTube video templates, covering YouTube intros and outros, How-to YouTube videos, YouTube gaming videos, fashion & makeup videos podcasts, fitness, vlog, sports, music, promo videos, webinar teaser, etc.

Preview

Vlogger Youtube Channel Intro Outro

Use This Template

Preview

Game Blogger Intro Outro

Use This Template

Preview

Animated Sport Intro

Use This Template

Preview

Cooking At Home

Use This Template

Drag and drop your video assets to create compelling YouTube videos on the intuitive timeline within your browser in clicks away, with no downloads and experience needed.

Enjoy free access to 4M+ high-quality and royalty-free stock assets, including, photos, videos, music, sound effects, GIFs, illustrations, text animations, circle transitions, and glitch overlays, while tons of user-friendly tools like speed control, picture-in-picture tool, screen recorder, crop mask, image background remover, etc. are readily available.

Done with the editing, you can directly share your video to YouTube, Google Drive, or Dropbox; a clickable link and embed code are also available for a private share, blogging, or other repurposing.

Directly upload your YouTube video to YouTube with one click.

2. TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy is a professional YouTube video SEO tool that works across platforms on Chrome extension, mobile apps on IOS, Android. It starts with a free version and if you need to use advanced tools, you may go for subscribed users.

TubeBuddy, YouTube video Seo tool

Use TubeBuddy’s powerful keyword explorer tool to get trending topics, titles, descriptions, tags, etc. as you upload and edit details for your YouTube videos.

Screen each YouTube video for the best practices, such as high-res thumbnail, comment pinned, comment hearted, infor cards added, captions added, etc.

Reveal the tags used by other YouTubers’ videos and ranking

Track the video

Filter the comments, etc.

Now, It's Your Move

Well, if you’ve made it here, we have reasons to believe that our tutorial does make sense to you. Hopefully, you can use our suggestions and tools like FlexClip or TubeBuddy to create and upload scroll-stopping videos to YouTube and begin the road to YouTube and business success.

Frank /

Passionate about photography, video-making and travel, Frank is a seasoned copywriter and a beloved father of 2-year-old daughter at FlexClip. He is always keen to share his latest discovery about video marketing and tricks to relive your memories through videos and images.