so i totally had no idea where the shorts "lived" on youtube as i pretty much do everything on the desktop. i've never made a mobile short. so you can find "shorts" on profiles that have activated a section for them. if you are a channel on youtube, go to EDIT your channel and create a new section/segment, you'll see it listed on the right as SHORTS, add that in and go to your account on the youtube app on mobile.

You can't customize the thumbnail right now (which kinda sucks) so i've been making a 16:9 version to go on the page so it does not look weird and frame it so it looks similar so it's not jarring. i really hope they give us the ability to either upload a static image or maybe at least select a few seconds like a live image or something.

I'd like to graphically make it stand out, so originaly i had a whole animation look that i hoped i could select the start to display that as a the static image, in the end i just left the borders on so it stands out.

I'm still playing with it and it seems kinda detached from your account, i don't see the views effecting your overall traffic metrics on your account so i'm a bit confused as to what the game play is for youtube for this? to be vertically relevant maybe compared to tiktok/instagram? Not sure.