Cleaner YouTube Video Page

There is a video-linking method that bypasses much of the clutter on You Tube's general public video-playing page.

The bypass method is linking directly to the video the way an iframe tag does.

Note: Always test both the link and the video before publishing. There was a report of a "Video unavailable" message when a video was tapped to play. On investigation, the iframe tag YouTube provides didn't work, either, for that particular video; it came up with the same "Video unavailable" message.

To make the direct link, copy the URL in your browser's address bar when you are at the general public video-playing page. Then, use one item in that URL (the video identification) to construct a direct URL.

The result is a URL you can link to in your web pages and in your emails where the video is not overwhelmed by lots of other stuff on the page.

Here is an example of such a direct URL.

www.youtube.com/embed/xSFvoF57DP0
(A "remote brainstorming" video by leadership skills consultant and personal friend, Grace Judson.)

How to Make the Direct URL

Here are several examples of general links to Grace Judson's video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSFvoF57DP0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSFvoF57DP0&list=RDZbZSe6N_BXs&index=1

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xSFvoF57DP0&index=1

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xSFvoF57DP0

There is a URL parameter (the information following a ? character of a URL) with key v and value xSFvoF57DP0 in each of those URLs.

The value xSFvoF57DP0 is the video identification.

Video identification is the value specified by the v key — the information that follows v= and either ends immediately before the next & character or ends at the end of the URL.

To make a direct link URL for bypassing much of YouTube's clutter, append the video identification to this URL: https://www.youtube.com/embed/

With the above example video identification, you'll end up with this:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/xSFvoF57DP0

(The URL with that video identification is the one used for the link near the beginning of this article.)

Short Instructions

1. Copy the video identification from a general YouTube video-viewing URL.

2. Append the video identification to https://www.youtube.com/embed/

You'll end up with a direct viewing URL suitable for linking at websites and in emails.

(This article first appeared with an issue of the Possibilities newsletter.)

Will Bontrager