Copying a video address correctly

Four gestures, one result worth having

There are four ordinary ways to get an address onto the clipboard, and they are not equally reliable. What you want in every case is a plain web address beginning with https and ending at the identifier of one video.

Anything else on the clipboard, such as the title of the page, a fragment of a sentence, or a wrapper added by a sharing menu, is the reason a paste fails. The sections below take each gesture in turn.

On a phone, a long-press on the playing video or on the share control usually surfaces Copy link. On a desktop, the address bar selection or a right-click on the page link is the reliable path. App share sheets that only offer Send to chat often still include Copy link one row down.

Long-press on a phone browser

Press and hold on the address bar in Safari or Chrome on a phone. A small menu appears with Copy in it, and choosing that puts the entire address on the clipboard even though the bar was showing you a shortened version of it.

Holding a link inside the page instead gives you a different menu with Copy link in it, and that copies wherever the link points. Use it on the title of the video you want. Do not use it on a thumbnail in a suggestions row, because that copies the suggestion.

After you copy, paste once into a notes app and glance at the host and path before you bring the address here. That glance catches truncated copies and accidental home-page addresses.

Right-click on a desktop

Right-clicking gives you one of two menus depending on what sits under the pointer, and they offer different things. Over an ordinary link the browser's menu appears with Copy link address in it, which copies the destination of that link.

Over the video itself the player's own menu appears. Its wording changes between players, and the entry you want names the video rather than the page. That entry hands you the address of the media file, which is read here directly.

The share sheet when there is no address bar

Inside an app there is no address bar to hold, so the share icon is the way in. It opens a sheet, and the entry you want is the one that copies rather than the ones that send.

Take the plain copy entry. Choosing a messaging app instead sends the video onward and puts nothing on the clipboard, and some apps rewrite the address when they hand it to another app.

The address bar, which works everywhere

When the other three gestures are confusing, fall back on this one. Open the video in a browser so that it is playing on its own page, click or tap once in the address bar to select the whole address, and copy it.

Start playback before you copy. Some sites rewrite the address in the bar the moment the video begins, so the address taken beforehand belongs to the page you arrived from rather than to the video you are watching.

Checking what landed on the clipboard

Paste into the box and read the result before pressing Analyze. Three things tell you the copy went wrong, and all three are visible at a glance.

Fix any of them by going back to the video and copying from the address bar.

Keep this tab open until the browser finishes writing the file for copy link download video. A prepared file only waits a short time before it expires from the temporary store.

• Words instead of an address. Some menus copy the title of the page, which is text and points at nothing.
• An address that stops mid-word or carries an ellipsis. Chat apps shorten long addresses for display, and copying the displayed text copies the shortening.
• A stray bracket, comma or quotation mark on the end, picked up from the sentence the address was sitting in.

Related pages

• Using the Copy link entry inside an app
• Where the correct link lives on each site
• Pasting a link you have already copied
• Page addresses and media addresses compared