What I Learnt about Making YouTube Videos for Mobile

If you’re making YouTube videos, you should consider shorts, for more views and a higher completion rate.

But sometimes you want to make a video longer than a minute. In such cases, if you want to make it mobile-optimised, here’s how you’d do it:

First, design your videos for smartphones. If you’re making a video to be viewed on a laptop, you can record the screen with a webcam in the corner:

This doesn’t work on mobile, where there isn’t enough space for both, so have only the content:

Or only your face:

Second, opt for a horizontal video over a vertical one. A vertical video looks like this:

Notice the status bar at the top, and all the stuff at the bottom. This leaves less space for the video, and distracts the viewer, who may end up seeing what else the channel posted, losing focus. All these buttons are so tempting to just press!

By contrast, a horizontal video looks like this:

Notice that the entire space goes to the content.

Third, to maximise usage of screen space, use a 2:1 aspect ratio. Any wider, and your video underlaps the notch. Any narrower, and you’re leaving screen space unused.

Fourth, if you’re recording a screen, record your smartphone screen, not your laptop screen. You could in theory record your laptop screen, specifically a rectangular area oe appropriate aspect ratio. I would not recommend this, since text will be too small to read when the video is viewed on a smartphone. A mobile UI is not a proportionally scaled down desktop UI. So record your smartphone’s screen, not your laptop screen.

If you use an iPhone and a Mac, plug the iPhone into the Mac, and record the iPhone’s screen on the Mac, rather than on the iPhone itself. Open QuickTime Player, choose File > New Movie Recording and select the iPhone from the dropdown. This way, you can use your external microphone plugged into your Mac, for better audio quality.