Link To A Specific Time In A YouTube Video

You can link to a specific part of a YouTube video, so that upon visiting the URL you are taken directly to that time, three different ways:

Method 1
The first is using the Share button on the video page, which will prompt you with a "Start at" selection. It amends the share URL with the query string needed to start at the specific time.

Method 2
The second option is adding the query string yourself. If you're using the shortened YouTube share link (youtu.be), you'd add it like either of these URLs (the minutes are optional if you're linking to a time that is less than a minute):

https://youtu.be/WOk4Nyq4sNM?t=0m20s
https://youtu.be/WOk4Nyq4sNM?t=20s

If you're using the full YouTube URL, you would add it like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOk4Nyq4sNM&t=0m20s
Method 3
The third option is adding a fragment identifier to the URL (# sign). It's similar to the query string, though does not appear to work in current versions of Firefox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOk4Nyq4sNM#t=0m20s
https://youtu.be/WOk4Nyq4sNM#t=0m20s

AurelioFN Jul 09, 2020
Great ......worked like a charm, thanks

DotMG Jan 09, 2020
January 2020, use a parameter named start, which is an integer indicating the number of seconds at which to start playing. To start at 3min19s, use ?start=199 (or ?.......&start=199)

nikos204433 Dec 15, 2018
nice post wonderful share

Richard Mar 18, 2018
I for got, I also wanted to point out the other (better) option is to use the semicolon in place of the ampersand. The & is an HTML escape so it really never should have been used in the first place, people simply ignore that 'rule'. But either must come after the question mark, which is the start of the query, and are used for splitting the parts of it. It's much easier to write in HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOk4Nyq4sNM;t=0m20s since nothing needs to be escaped, in the same way that + is often used for a space rather than escaping with %20 (HTTP entity for a space).

Richard Mar 10, 2018
It does still work on the current URL, or video you are watching. What's likely is that YouTube is doing a redirect and so the # is dropped. The one reason to use it is to link to times in the video without reloading the whole page as the query would do. However this requires JavaScript code to add the time as a query to the video request.

Richard Mar 10, 2018
The # is not supposed to work in a URL, I don't know why anyone would ever try it since it's not sent to the server.

Lee Feb 26, 2018
Use "&" instead of "#" or "?" - works for me with firefox. Don't know why they keep changing it....

Nick Jan 26, 2018
It still works with the # sign on Chrome, but does appear to no longer be working with Firefox. I'll update the post with some more information on that. Thanks!

Peter Ryan Jan 26, 2018
As of 2018 this doesn't work anymore with the # sign, you need to use ? instead. Example: https://youtu.be/a4rK5iqJke8?t=3m27s

Lloyd Dec 11, 2017
Great! Works!

Joe Mara Jun 12, 2017
The more interesting question is how to play a specific part. From-to. I've seen that, but I don't know it yet.

Kerry Smyth Mar 02, 2017
Didn't work. This is a 5 year old video

David Andrews Oct 08, 2016
I'm with you Siegrune...can't get both to work at the same time (google sheets seems to drop the time)

Siegrune Waeny Oct 11, 2015
H! How can I use the 2 scripts in the same time? To Link To A Full-Screen YouTube Video and Link To A Specific Time In A YouTube Video Thanks!

Isaak Rasmussen Aug 30, 2012
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Isaak Rasmussen Aug 30, 2012
help me