YouTube Shorts automation that keeps your channel posting.

YouTube Shorts automation means a tool makes your Shorts and uploads them through the YouTube API on a schedule, with no one opening YouTube Studio. Shortmint does both halves: it produces each video from a topic, then uploads it with its title, description, tags and thumbnail at the times you set.

The two schedules

Making a video and posting it run on separate clocks, so a slow render never makes an upload late.

Making videos

• It works through your queue of topics in order. When the queue is empty, it thinks up a topic the channel has not covered and makes that.
• Each video gets the full treatment: script, pictures, narration, captions and render.
• "Run one now" makes a video this minute without moving the schedule.

Uploading videos

• You set upload times, for example 07:30 and 18:30, and a daily cap.
• Each upload lands at a slightly different minute, within a window you choose, so the channel doesn't post like a machine at 9:00 sharp.
• Videos without a listing get one written first, or are skipped, whichever you prefer.

What gets uploaded with each Short

Everything YouTube asks for, written from the video's own narration:

• A title under 45 characters that names the thing the viewer will recognise, with the search keyword near the front.
• A description whose first sentence works on its own in the hundred or so characters the Shorts player shows.
• Hashtags that are real, browsable feeds, with #shorts first.
• Twelve to eighteen search tags, including the way people type the symptom or question.
• A thumbnail with two or three words printed on it.

A score next to each listing says in plain words what could be better, such as a title that's too long or a keyword that falls out of the visible description.

Public, private or scheduled

Uploads go up private by default, so nothing is public until you say so. You can switch the default to public, or have each video uploaded private with a publish time, which lets YouTube make it public by itself a few hours later. That gives you a window to read the listing, and the channel still publishes if you never look.

A private video earns no views. If uploads stay private and nobody flips them, the channel isn't publishing at all. The schedule screen shows how many finished videos are still waiting to go public.

YouTube's upload limits

YouTube's free API allowance covers about six uploads a day. Each Google Cloud project gets 10,000 quota units a day and one upload costs 1,600 of them. The count resets at midnight Pacific time, not at midnight where you live. Shortmint counts against Google's day. A cap of four leaves room to retry a failed upload without the retry being what runs you out.

When something goes wrong

Automation is only useful if it keeps going. Nobody checks a schedule at 3 a.m. Shortmint notes a failed video and tries the next slot on time. Network drops and expired tokens are retried. A failure raises a desktop notification and can message your phone, Slack or Discord. Listings, queues and settings are backed up every day, with two weeks kept.

Beyond YouTube

The same finished videos can be posted as Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels on their own schedules. Long videos have their own schedule too.