By syncing your YouTube account to Substack, creators can automatically upload Substack videos to a YouTube channel for extra distribution.
When you publish a video post, your videos can now be automatically uploaded to your YouTube account. In this guide, we'll show you how to:
- Connect your Substack and YouTube account
- Publish a video post
Things to note:
- Before you sync your accounts, ensure that you've created a YouTube channel first.
- If you're planning on auto-uploading a video longer than 15 minutes, make sure that your YouTube channel is verified or the upload will fail.
- The YouTube account will be synced to your Substack profile and not the publication. If a number of creators contribute to a publication and publish videos, we recommend using a shared YouTube account or channel to ensure videos are uploaded to the right place.
Connecting your accounts
1. Connect your Substack and YouTube account via your dashboard banner or in the Connected accounts section on your publication's Settings page.
2. Grant permissions to Substack when linking your accounts.
Note: If you want to disconnect your YouTube account from your Substack, head to the Connected accounts section on your publication's Settings page and select "Disconnect". Any videos that were uploaded to YouTube will remain on your YouTube channel (unless you manually delete them on YouTube). If you delete a Substack video post, the auto uploaded video will also remain on YouTube.
Publishing a video
Free video
1. When you publish a “Video post,” we will automatically check the “Auto-upload it to YouTube” box. You can choose to un-check this on a post-by-post basis.
2. In the post's publish settings, you’ll be able to customize the YouTube title, description, and privacy settings.
Note: By default videos are are selected to private visibility but you can set them to unlisted or public. By default, the box next to "Include Substack watermark" will be checked– this means a small watermark with a Substack logo and URL of your publication will appear in the upper-left corner of the video. To remove a watermark from appearing, un-check the box.
3. Once you publish your post, you can check the status on the Share center or in Latest post section on Home.
Tip: If the video fails to upload, or fails at any time during the processing phase, we'll display a failed status with a retry button.
4. Once your video has published to YouTube, you can make further edits on YouTube studio.
Free preview of paid post
If you set up a free preview of a paid post, only the preview portion will be uploaded to YouTube video. In the description of the YouTube video, we'll automatically add a link to your paid post on Substack.