How do I upload a video from my Apple iPhone to YouTube?

Thanks to your articles and some experimentation on my part, I have figured out how to make videos on my new Apple iPhone 3GS. My question is: how do I upload these videos directly to YouTube as I keep reading you can do?

Dave's Answer:

If you've been experimenting, I'm surprised you haven't tried to email a video to yourself and noticed the "Upload to YouTube" button immediately below the email option, but I'll let ya slide this time and show you how to do it.

First off, a suggestion: while you're on a regular computer, I suggest that if you don't have a YouTube account that you sign up for one. It'll make the upload process from your iPhone 3GS a ton easier. I mean, you could enter all the account information on your cell, but, really, do you want to suffer through field after field after field of data entry when you could probably do the entire process in just a minute or two on your laptop or desktop system? :-)

Here's the sign up link: Sign up to get an account on YouTube.

Great. Now, let's get to it!

I took an (I admit, extraordinarily boring) example video while working on this blog entry that's about ten seconds long. When I look at the video in the photo gallery on the iPhone, it looks like this:

What you want to do is tap on the box with the arrow coming out of it on the lower left corner. Now you'll see some options:

Really, you should have already seen this if you've been experimenting with different features on your phone, but I'll cut you some slack!

Tap on "Send to YouTube" and...

Here's where you want to know your YouTube account settings. Enter them and tap on "Sign In". Now YouTube wants you to enter a title, description, tags, and categorize the video.

We'll start with the first few fields, then continue:

Remember as you go through this that the better your description the more likely people will find it when they're searching YouTube for specific types of videos.

And tags are perhaps the most important one to be generous and label properly: better to have a few extra than to be too stingy...

When you're ready, tap on "Publish" on the top right and you'll rather suddenly be dropped back into your photo gallery without any additional feedback:

If you look closely, though, the "online activity wheel" is shown on the top left and sure enough, while you're wondering what's going on, the video is actually being uploaded to YouTube directly.

After a few moments (or longer), you'll see the following pop up:

I'm enthusiastic, so I'll tap "View on YouTube", which switches me to the YouTube player app on the Apple iPhone 3GS:

And, finally, when I can view the video, well, I'm moving a bit too fast, perhaps:

A little bit of time passes and finally, yes, I can view the video.

Here's an embedded copy:

As I said, it's pretty boring, but considering I took the video on my iPhone, uploaded it to YouTube and was able to share the URL with my friends, all within about three minutes, well, it's a pretty nice feature.

And now you know how to use it too!

Categorized: Twitter, LinkedIn and Social Network Help , iPhone and Cell Phone Help (Article 8960, Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: apple iphone 3gs, iphone video, video upload, youtube
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Comments

OMG - I am so relieved that I found this website - how ridiculously easy!!

Posted by: monica at March 6, 2010 5:51 PM

Question:
I sent a video directly from my iphone to my personal youtube account. Worked great. Now id like to send a video to my other (business) youtube account and my iphone defaults to my personal youtube account info. I cant find out where to reset OR enter in another account info. I'm stuck with uploading to one account now!
HELP please!
Many Thanks.
Brian.

Posted by: Brian Santilena at March 11, 2010 6:58 PM

I'm trying to upload a video from my iphone onto youtube, but I'm not given the option even of sending it anywhere by email. Any idea of what gives?

Posted by: Ruthie at April 25, 2010 4:16 PM

Hello, I hope you are having a great day. I have gone through this process about 5 times and tried different videos as well. It will go all the way through and then tell me it could not publish? I have no idea how to fix this? or if its even possible. Thank you.

Posted by: Michelle at May 11, 2010 1:12 AM

@Brian Santilena try logging out of your personal account from the Youtube app. Then log in with your business account before trying again.

@Ruthie press the curved arrow at the bottom left of the screen while viewing the video.

@Michelle Try again using Wifi, ensure your phone doesn't lock while the video is being uploaded, if your phone is jailbroken try restoring it in case some error ocurred during the jailbreak process. If all else fails contact Youtube and Apple support.

Posted by: kazemizuhi at June 20, 2010 4:01 AM

Hi Dave, I recently has my IPhone 8gb stolen. There are YouTube videos online that concern me that this MAY be my IPhone used in making these videos. Dave is there anyway I can tell how the video was made ( with what type of camera) or recording device. I know it's an odd question but I could use your help please. Thank you for your time Dave.

Posted by: Teresa Legum at July 23, 2010 5:43 AM

Sorry, Teresa, but I'm afraid that there's nothing I am aware of embedded in videos that will uniquely identify the phone or device that was used to shoot it...

Posted by: Dave Taylor at July 23, 2010 10:34 PM

I have tried over and over to send video from my iphone to You tube. I get right to the end of the instructions only to get the message - You Tube not available - what am I doing wrong? Help!

Posted by: june jones at September 12, 2010 10:44 AM

dave i like to video the band playing music then post to you tube but my iphone seems to have a limit of 1min 30secs - how is it possible to upload say a 5 or 6 min video??

Posted by: Phil at October 25, 2010 3:16 AM

I found that like others i could not post a video to youtube with my iphone 3gs every time i tried it would tell me it failed but by chance i finally got one to go through and i caught that i had to be signed in to youtube on my home pc. so sign in to youtube on your lap top or desk top then try sending from iphone3gs mabye that will help some

Posted by: Tim at January 6, 2011 5:49 PM

Hi!!
I'm trying to send a video from my iphone4 to youtube. Ihave done this already with videos in my regular camera log. My problem is that i've copied videos from my old phone to pc and then into itunes. When i'm playing the video now it's in the 'ipod section' of my phone and this doesn't give me the option to forward to mail or youtube :(
Any help??

Posted by: Steven at January 7, 2011 4:52 AM

I love your article, it's very interesting. I've created a post similar to this on my blog, iPhoneFuze. It's located at - http://iphonefuze.com/2011/01/06/beginner-want-to-share-your-videos-from-your-iphone-straight-to-youtube-learn-how-to-here/

Posted by: Momo at January 7, 2011 9:51 AM

hey, when i try to upload my video to youtube, and meet erro 403, can you take a look at this ,
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4706973/upload-video-to-youtube-via-iphone-application-serviceforbiddenexception

Posted by: zzcc at January 17, 2011 6:29 AM

Is it possible to take any video from YouTube and post it to my FACEBOOK using my 3GS? if so what are the steps?

Posted by: Danny at February 24, 2011 7:09 AM

I have an iPhone 4 and I have uploaded videos onto YouTube from the iPhone. However the videos have black bars on the side, narrowing the video. How do I get rid of the black bars?

Posted by: Jeff at March 29, 2011 10:19 AM

Jeff all you have to do is upload the drivers main frame to the devices overload positioning element, hope that helps.

Posted by: Dusty at March 30, 2011 9:32 PM

Dusty,

Thanks so much for the help. I actually rebooted the mainframe and re routed the server to a dsl based encryption.

Posted by: Jeff at March 31, 2011 6:13 PM

I uploaded one video but I have three other ones I want to do and my IPhone comes up with a message "unable to sent to you tube" do you know why?
also I went to search for my video in you tube but I cannot find it any where... do you know what's going on?

Posted by: Stacy at August 8, 2011 3:15 PM

I made YouTube account, it only works when I'm on the Internet YouTube so when I upload video it says login and password but when I enter it it just says login and password again. What do I do?

Posted by: stealthinator247 at December 28, 2011 6:43 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!