YouTube Is Going to Add Watermarks to Downloaded Shorts

YouTube is going to start adding watermarks to downloaded Shorts.

“If you’re a creator who downloads your Shorts from YouTube Studio to share across other platforms,” the company says(Opens in a new window), “you’ll now find a watermark added to your downloaded content.”

The announcement was made a few days after The Verge reported(Opens in a new window) that Instagram was removing audio from Reels that people downloaded before posting on the platform. This initially seemed like a way to prevent the videos from being shared elsewhere, but it turned out to be a bug(Opens in a new window).

That isn’t the case here. YouTube says it’s adding the watermark “so your viewers can see that the content you’re sharing across platforms can be found on YouTube Shorts”—which is a thinly veiled way of saying it’s sick of people using its tools to make videos for TikTok and Instagram.

It makes sense for creators to post content to multiple platforms. Shorts, TikTok, and Reels were all designed around brief videos meant to be watched on a smartphone. The primary difference, aside from which app people launch to watch these videos, lies in each service’s editing tools.

Watermarking downloaded Shorts could encourage creators to keep the content they’re making with YouTube Studio on YouTube itself. And if they don’t, well, maybe the watermark will be enough to convince TikTok and Instagram users to watch Shorts via YouTube instead.

YouTube says that watermarks on downloaded Shorts “is rolling out over the next few weeks on desktop” and that it plans “to expand to mobile over the coming months.”