Free · No sign-up · Link helpers only

YouTube Link Tools

Timestamp links, embed code, and URLs with the tracking taken out

Watch, youtu.be, Shorts, live, embed, or mobile links all work.

These tools need JavaScript. Everything except the video title is worked out in your browser.

No downloading here — video, audio, and thumbnails belong to YouTube and their terms say so. These are link helpers only.

Timestamps that actually work

Type 4:12 and get a link that opens the video at 4:12, in both the short and full URL forms, ready to paste into a message.

Tracking stripped out

YouTube's Share button adds an si token that identifies you. The clean link drops it, along with the usual utm and referral clutter.

Embed code you can paste

A current iframe snippet with the right permissions, optionally responsive and optionally on YouTube's privacy-enhanced domain.

How to use these tools

  1. 1

    Paste any YouTube link into the box. The video ID is picked out of whatever shape the link is in, and the title and thumbnail load so you can check you have the right video.

  2. 2

    Type a time like 1:23 if you want the link to start partway through. Both link forms update as you type, and the seconds value is shown so you can see what is going into the URL.

  3. 3

    Copy whichever you need: the clean link, a timestamped link, or the embed code with the options you have ticked.

Why I built these

Every few weeks I want to send someone a video and say "watch from here", and every time I end up hand-editing a URL: work out the seconds, remember whether it is t=95 or t=95s, notice that the share link has picked up a tracking token, and strip it. It is a two-minute annoyance that comes back forever, so I turned it into a page.

The embed builder came from the same place. YouTube's own embed dialog gives you a snippet, but it is easy to miss the privacy-enhanced option, and the fixed 560×315 size is wrong for most modern layouts. The responsive version here wraps the iframe so it scales with whatever column it lands in.

Everything except the video title is worked out in your browser: the ID, the seconds, the clean URL, and the embed code never leave the page. The title and thumbnail need one small request through my server, because YouTube's oEmbed endpoint does not allow browsers to call it directly. Nothing about you is stored — the lookup is cached by video ID for a day so the same video is not fetched twice.

Frequently asked questions

How do I link to a specific time in a YouTube video?

Add a t parameter with the number of seconds, like https://youtu.be/VIDEOID?t=95. Paste your link above, type the time as minutes and seconds, and this page writes the link for you in both the short and full forms.

What is the si parameter in a YouTube share link?

It is a tracking token YouTube adds when you use the Share button, tying the link back to the account that shared it. Nothing breaks if you remove it, which is exactly what the clean link here does.

What is youtube-nocookie.com?

It is YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed domain. A video embedded from it does not set advertising cookies until someone actually presses play, which is usually what you want on your own site. It is ticked by default here.

Can I download a YouTube video or thumbnail here?

No. Downloading video, audio, or thumbnails from YouTube is against their terms of service, so I do not offer it and I do not link to sites that do. If you want to convert a video you already have on your device, the file converter handles that.

Does this work with Shorts and live links?

Yes. Shorts, live, embed, youtu.be, and mobile links all carry the same eleven-character video ID, so every tool here reads it and hands back the standard watch link.

Why did the playlist part of my link disappear?

Because a clean link is meant to point at one video. If you paste a link that was opened from a playlist, the list and index parameters are dropped so the person you send it to gets the video, not the whole queue.

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