Link in a YouTube Short: description and comments aren't clickable

A URL you put in a Short's description or in its comments is not clickable. YouTube's Sharing links with your audiences page says so, and gives the reason as reducing spam and scam attempts (read 2026-10-03). What does work is a different set of places: your channel's profile links, a related video, brand deal links, Shopping affiliate links and a few Shorts features.

So the production question is where the link goes, not how to format it. Decide that before you export, because anything you want a viewer to see on screen has to be in the video file itself.

Which link surfaces work for Shorts?

This is the page's own breakdown, reduced to the surfaces that matter for a Short.

Can I put a URL on the video itself?

You can show it, but nobody can tap it. A short handle or a plain "link on our channel" line is easier to read than a long address. Keep it inside the area the Shorts interface does not cover; Sume's caption placement is covered in the safe zone post below.

Sume's video captions route burns authored overlay copy onto a video: pass cues with text, start and end and it skips speech-to-text (docs read 2026-10-03). That is a way to put a call to action on screen. It does not make anything clickable, and it needs a video URL the route can fetch, so check the docs page for the current input rule.

Where should the real link live?

Put the destination in one of the clickable places and let the video point to it in words. For a long video, set it as the Short's related video, as covered in that post. For a sponsor, use the brand deal link and label the video as paid promotion; the paid promotion post covers the label.