Publishing to YouTube.
Your Google project, Google's rules.

01A Google Cloud project

1. Open https://console.cloud.google.com and create a project (for example "Studio publishing").
2. APIs & Services, Library: enable YouTube Data API v3.

3. APIs & Services, OAuth consent screen: user type External. App name, support e-mail, your domain, and links to your privacy policy and terms. Add the scopes:

   • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.upload (upload videos and thumbnails)
   • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.readonly (channel name, statistics)
   • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.force-ssl (captions and playlists)
4. While the consent screen is in Testing, add the Google accounts that will connect channels as test users.
5. APIs & Services, Credentials, Create credentials, OAuth client ID: type Web application. Authorised redirect URI: your public URL plus /api/youtube/callback, for example https://studio.your-agency.com/api/youtube/callback.
6. Copy the client ID and secret into the console: Settings, Integrations, "Google OAuth client ID" and "Google OAuth client secret".
7. Settings, Channels and publishing: turn "Publishing to YouTube" on.

People then open a channel in the studio and press Connect YouTube.

02Google's rules you need to know

These are Google's rules, not the studio's. Read Google's current documentation before you go live; they change.

• Uploads are private until your project is audited. Videos uploaded through an API project that Google has not audited are locked to private. To publish unlisted, public or scheduled videos, apply for the YouTube API Services audit (the "YouTube API Services - Audit and Quota Extension Form"). The studio says so on the Publish step and uploads as private until then. Plan for the review taking weeks.
• Testing mode sign-ins expire. While the consent screen is in Testing, Google ends the sign-in after about seven days; people must press Connect again. Publish the consent screen (and get it verified, since the scopes are sensitive) to avoid that.
• Daily quota. A new project gets 10,000 quota units a day. One upload costs 1,600 units, so about six uploads a day before thumbnails, captions and playlists. When the quota is used up the studio says so in plain words and the upload can be retried the next day. A higher quota is part of the same audit form.

03What an upload does

1. Resumable upload of the rendered MP4 (survives a dropped connection; the sign-in is refreshed during long uploads).
2. Title, description with chapters, sources and footage credits, tags, category, language, made-for-kids flag and privacy or schedule (publishAt).
3. The chosen thumbnail (JPEG, under YouTube's 2 MB limit). Custom thumbnails need a verified YouTube channel.
4. Captions from the narration (SRT).
5. The playlist set on the channel, if any.
6. The altered or synthetic content disclosure (see below).

Shorts are uploaded the same way as their own videos. A failed upload shows YouTube's reason and can be retried. Channel statistics (views, likes, comments) are refreshed every six hours.

04The AI disclosure

YouTube asks creators to disclose realistic content that is altered or synthetic. The narration voice of these videos is synthetic. Settings, Channels and publishing, "Mark uploads as altered or synthetic content" is on by default and sets YouTube's disclosure on every upload; the description also carries one plain sentence saying the voice is synthetic and the script was written with AI help from the listed sources. Keep it on.

05YouTube's content policies

YouTube does not monetise inauthentic or mass-produced repetitive content. The studio is built to make original, sourced, edited videos: research with sources, a script written for each video, a fact check, designed scenes, credited footage, and a person who reviews and publishes every episode. The originality report on the Publish step checks for the most common problems. It cannot promise how YouTube will judge a channel; that is up to YouTube.