How to Upload YouTube Shorts from PC (Under 2 Minutes)

Uploading YouTube Shorts from your phone is slower than it needs to be. The desktop upload flow does the same job in under two minutes, gives you better control over thumbnails and tags, and requires exactly one trick to make YouTube recognize your video as a Short.

The One Thing Most Creators Miss#

Most people assume Shorts have to go through the mobile app. They don't. The standard YouTube upload flow on desktop handles everything, the only reason creators don't know this is that nobody tells them.

The single thing that separates a Short from a regular video upload on desktop is one hashtag in the description: #Shorts.

That's it. YouTube reads that hashtag and classifies the upload accordingly. Without it, your vertical video just sits in your feed as a regular upload.

Before you even open YouTube, there's one other requirement: your file needs to be in portrait (vertical) orientation. If the video isn't already vertical, YouTube won't register it as a Short regardless of what you put in the description. Sort that out before you start and the rest takes two minutes.

The Full Upload Flow#

1. Go to YouTube Studio and click Upload Video in the top right corner, same button you'd use for any video.
2. Select your file. Confirm it's vertical before you proceed.
3. Add your title.
4. Write your description, then add #Shorts at the end and hit Enter.
5. Upload or select a thumbnail. Desktop gives you a proper file picker here, which is one reason this flow beats mobile.
6. Mark it as not made for kids, add any tags you want (you can include #Shorts here too), and choose a category.
7. Click Next twice. YouTube will run a copyright check automatically, you don't need to do anything.
8. Set visibility to Public (or schedule it if you're batching) and publish.

Your Short shows up in your channel immediately. The whole sequence runs "twice as fast using your computer instead of your phone," and once you've done it a couple of times it gets faster.

If you want to take the SEO side seriously while you're in that upload flow, Taja AI automates YouTube Shorts titles, tags, and descriptions in seconds, worth pairing with this workflow if you're uploading regularly.

Speed Up the Whole Workflow#

Fast uploads only help if you have content ready to upload. The bottleneck for most creators shifts from the upload itself to scripting, figuring out what to say and how to structure it for short-form.

The HeyGen Script Generator GPT is a free tool that writes optimized short-form video scripts so you always have something ready to go. If you're trying to batch your Shorts content faster with AI, this is a practical starting point.

The upload is the easy part once you have this down. Vertical file, #Shorts in the description, publish. Two minutes and you're done.

Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/QdabmifYAYQ

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