YouTube

Upload videos and Shorts to a YouTube channel through the YouTube Data API v3. Postli supports title, description, tags, category, privacy, made-for-kids declaration, and scheduled publish.

Requirements

• A Google account with a YouTube channel created (a channel is required — a Google account alone is not enough).
• The channel’s upload limit must not be locked — brand-new accounts may be limited to 15-minute uploads until phone verification.

Spec

Create your Google Cloud project

YouTube uploads go through a Google Cloud project you own — this also gives you your own 10,000-unit / day quota instead of sharing Postli’s pool.

1. Go to Google Cloud Console → Credentials and create a new project. Name it something like postli-youtube.
2. Open APIs & Services → Library and enable:
   • YouTube Data API v3
   • YouTube Analytics API
   • YouTube Reporting API
3. Go to OAuth consent screen. Choose External user type. Fill the app name, support email, and developer contact. Add yourself as a test user.
4. Add these scopes to the consent screen: youtube.upload, youtube.readonly, youtube, userinfo.email.
5. Back in Credentials, click Create credentials → OAuth client ID. Pick Web application. Add the Authorised redirect URI:
   https://app.usepostli.com/api/integration/youtube/callback
6. Copy the generated Client ID and Client Secret.
7. In Postli, open Settings → Integrations → YouTube, paste both values, and save.

OAuth setup

Once credentials are saved, go to Integrations → YouTube → Connect. Postli launches Google’s OAuth screen. Choose the Google account, then pick the channel (if your account has multiple Brand channels).

Scopes Postli requests:

Post types in detail

Video

Standard upload — title, description, tags, category, thumbnail. Postli uploads via Google’s resumable upload protocol so even multi-GB files survive flaky connections.

Short

A YouTube Short is just a video that meets the format rules: vertical 9:16, 60 seconds or shorter, with #Shorts in title or description. Postli auto-appends the hashtag if you tick the “Publish as Short” toggle on the YouTube channel tab.

Scheduling

Two layers of scheduling:

• Postli schedule — the time at which Postli calls the upload API.
• YouTube schedule — uploaded as Private with a publishAt timestamp; YouTube flips it to public at that moment. Use this when you want a video uploaded and processed well before its public release.

Auto-comments

YouTube’s comment-write endpoint requires the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.force-ssl scope and is gated by Google’s API access review for content-owner accounts. Postli does not currently request this scope; auto-comments are therefore disabled for YouTube. Engagement reads (views, likes, comments count) work normally.

Rate limits & quota

YouTube Data API v3 uses a 10,000 quota-units / day per project system, and uploading a single video costs ~1,600 units. In practice, this caps a single Google API project at roughly 6 uploads per day per account. Postli’s production project quota is significantly higher; queued uploads back off if the per-channel daily upload cap is hit.

Gotchas & best practices

• 15-minute limit on unverified accounts. Verify your phone in YouTube Studio before connecting if you plan to upload longer videos.
• Brand channel selection. A Google account can manage multiple Brand channels — if you don’t see the right one in the post composer, reconnect and pick the correct channel.
• Made for kids. The COPPA “Made for kids” flag is mandatory at upload time. Postli defaults to No; override per post if needed.
• Thumbnail upload requires phone verification on the channel.
• Shorts hashtag. Without #Shorts, even a vertical 60-second video may be classified as a regular video by YouTube.

Webhooks

Postli does not subscribe to YouTube webhooks (Push Notifications). Engagement is polled.