YouTube Link &
Timestamp Converter
Paste any YouTube link and get every other form of it — and the share-tracking parameter removed on the way through. Nothing is sent anywhere; it is all string work in your browser.
- ● Short link, embed, thumbnail, RSS
- ● Timestamps in all three parameter forms
- ● Strips ?si= and utm tracking
- ● Runs offline once loaded
New to this? Read the guide before you start.
- youtube.com/watch?v=…
- youtu.be/…
- youtube.com/embed/…
- youtube-nocookie.com/embed/…
- youtube.com/shorts/…
- youtube.com/live/…
- youtube.com/v/…
- m.youtube.com/watch?v=…
- music.youtube.com/watch?v=…
Two decades of accumulated formats, some from products that no longer exist. All nine parse here.
Any video, channel, handle or playlist URL — or a bare video ID, channel ID or @handle. Everything happens in your browser; nothing is uploaded or logged.
The ?si= token YouTube's share sheet adds is reported and dropped, along with utm parameters and feature flags. Nothing about what the link opens changes.
Watch pages want t=90s, short links want t=90, embeds want start=90. Same intent, three spellings, all handled.
A channel's RSS feed and its uploads-as-a-playlist both exist and neither appears anywhere in the interface.
Pure string work — no API call, no quota, no logging. It keeps working with the network off.
How to
How to shorten a YouTube link or add a timestamp
A share-sheet link, a full watch URL, an embed, a Shorts link, or a bare ID. All nine formats parse.
1:30, 90s and 90 all work. If the link already had a timestamp it is picked up automatically.
Short link to share, embed URL for a site, thumbnail for a facade, RSS to follow a channel without an account.
YouTube linkifies 1:30 written as plain text. A URL pasted into a comment does not become a jump link.
Worth knowing
What the ?si= on your shared link is doing
It is not part of the video address, and the link works without it.
Share a video from the YouTube app and the link comes back as youtu.be/VIDEO?si=AbC123…. That token is a share identifier: it marks which share the click came from, so YouTube can connect the person who sent it to the people who opened it.
There is nothing sinister about it and nothing useful about it either — for you. Forwarding it just carries someone's share fingerprint into every group chat the link lands in. Deleting it changes nothing about where the link goes.
The same applies to utm_source, feature and ab_channel. This tool lists what it found and rebuilds without any of them, which is the whole reason to run a link through it before pasting it somewhere permanent.
The parameters removed are si, pp, feature, ab_channel, app, utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign. Everything that affects playback — the video ID, the timestamp, the playlist if you keep it — is preserved exactly.
Limits
What this converter cannot do
It gives you YouTube's own youtu.be form. A branded short link needs a third-party shortener, which adds a redirect that can expire or be repointed.
That needs an API call, so it lives in the Channel ID Finder. This page is deliberately offline-only.
It rebuilds the address; it does not fetch it. A perfectly formed link to a deleted video is still a link to a deleted video.
IDs are not derived from anything. If you only have a title, that is a search, not a conversion.
YouTube does that, and only for the plain clock form. Nothing you paste can force a URL to become a jump link.
The index= parameter is deliberately dropped. It breaks the moment the owner reorders the playlist, so carrying it forward is worse than useless.
One tool, every intent
However you searched for it, this is the page
People arrive wanting to shorten a link, make a timestamp link, pull a video ID out of a URL, or find a channel's RSS feed. One paste covers all four.
Sharing a specific moment
Set the start time and take the short link. For a comment, take the clock form instead — those are different outputs for what feels like the same job, and mixing them up is why so many comment timestamps are not clickable.
Cleaning a link before you publish it
A link in a newsletter or a document outlives the share that produced it. Running it through here drops the tracking token and leaves the address.
Following a channel without an account
Paste a channel URL and take the RSS feed. It has worked continuously for seventeen years and YouTube has never once shown it in the interface.
Building an embed
The embed URL is here; the full iframe with its attributes is in the Embed Code Generator, which also handles lazy loading and the parameters that still work.
Also known as
- yt short link
- youtube url shortener
- shorten youtube link
- youtube timestamp link
- video timestamps
- how to timestamp in youtube comments
- yt video url
- youtube video id from url
- youtube rss feed url
- remove si from youtube link
- what is si in youtube link
- youtube playlist link extractor
Related YouTube tools
Keep the workflow going
Build the full iframe instead, turn a transcript into chapter timestamps, or resolve a handle to its permanent channel ID.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How do I shorten a YouTube link?+
Paste it above and take the youtu.be form. That is YouTube's own shortener — no third party is involved, nothing can expire or start redirecting somewhere else, and it works everywhere a full link does.
What is the ?si= on the end of a shared YouTube link?+
A share-tracking token that YouTube's app appends when you use the share sheet. It identifies the share, not the video, so passing it on tells YouTube where the link travelled. This tool reports it and leaves it out of every rebuilt link.
How do I make a link that starts at a specific time?+
Set the start time above. The short link gets ?t=90, the watch page gets &t=90s and the embed gets &start=90 — three different parameter names for the same thing, which is the sort of detail this tool exists to handle.
How do I timestamp a YouTube comment?+
Type the plain clock form — 1:30 — and YouTube turns it into a clickable link automatically. A full URL in a comment does not become a jump link, which is why the tool gives you the bare form to copy separately.
How do I get a channel's RSS feed?+
Paste any channel URL or ID. The feed is at /feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC…, YouTube has never surfaced it in the interface, and it still works — it is the simplest way to follow uploads without an account.
Why does my link include a playlist I did not mean to share?+
Because you copied it while watching from inside one, so it carried list= along. The playlist is dropped by default here and there is a toggle to keep it — sharing a video and accidentally sharing a 200-video queue are different intentions.