There is no straightforward way to create a shortcut for YouTube videos on your Android home screen. Your launcher (like Nova) may have some to do it, but if not, here is how to create a shortcut on your home screen.
Use Shortcut Maker to create shortcuts
Here are step-by-step instructions on how to create a link for your favorite YouTube stream.
- Install Shortcut Maker from the Google Play Store. It's free.
Shortcut Maker does much more, but for now you only need a website link- Now you need a link to your favorite video or live stream. Open the YouTube app (or your favorite YouTube app), and open the video you want to play. Touch the Share button under the video. Your phone will let you copy the URL to the clipboard, in one of the options; do this.
- Open the Shortcut Maker app, and select the Web site option. Give a name to your link, and paste the link in the second box.
- Hit the Place in the home screen button.
- Here you can customize the icon (look at "System icons" for a YouTube icon), and also select which app the link will open. I didn't touch the default, and it opened with YouTube app. If it doesn't open with what you want, you can select the app here.
- Hit the Create shortcut button. That's all, the icon will appear in your home screen.
YouTube shortcut tips
- Some channels may change their live stream address from time to time. It may be more reliable to use the /live link in that case, but it's also not guaranteed. You can make your own "live" link like this:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/[Channel Id]/live
- You can create a link to a search, and see search results directly when you open the link. To do that, create a link such as:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=live+nature
The “live+nature” is your search query, which translates to “live nature” in a YouTube search.
A shortcut can also open a search result screenConclusion
Between many rich features of Android like widgets, being able to create a shortcut of a YouTube video almost looks like forgotten. But Android is powerful enough to provide multiple ways of doing this, and I shared just one of them with you.
If you have a better way of creating a link to a YouTube video on your home screen, please share it with everybody in the comments below.
