YouTube Stories for Creators: What Happened and What to Use Now

Last updated: September 2026

Key Takeaways

• YouTube Stories no longer exist. The feature was retired on 26 June 2023, and any Stories still live on that date expired 7 days later as normal.
• YouTube’s own reasoning was consolidation: with Community posts, Shorts, long-form and Live all available, Stories were the feature that didn’t earn its place.
• The replacement is two features, not one. Shorts took over the casual video job. Posts (the old Community tab) took over the quick text, image and poll updates.
• The big upgrade is permanence. Stories vanished in 7 days. A Short stays on your channel indefinitely and keeps being recommended, which is a better deal for anyone building a library.
• Shorts run up to 3 minutes at a maximum of 1080p, and monetising creators keep 45 percent of their allocated Shorts revenue whether or not the Short uses music.
• There is no sign of Stories returning, and no ephemeral equivalent on YouTube today. If disappearing content is central to your plan, that plan belongs on Instagram.

If you came here hunting for the Stories button in your YouTube app, we can save you the search. It’s not hidden. It’s gone.

YouTube retired Stories on 26 June 2023. Stories already published on that date ran out their normal 7 days and then disappeared for good.

We still get asked about this, usually by someone who read an older guide (including, we’ll admit, an older version of this one) and went looking for a feature that no longer exists.

So this page has been rebuilt to answer what you actually need: what happened, why, and exactly where the job Stories used to do has moved to.

What Happened to YouTube Stories?

YouTube discontinued Stories on 26 June 2023. The feature had launched in 2018 for channels with more than 10,000 subscribers, showed short mobile-only clips that expired after 7 days, and was shut down so YouTube could concentrate on Shorts, Community posts, long-form video and Live.

YouTube’s own statement put it plainly: there are many ways to create on YouTube, from Community posts to Shorts to long-form and Live, and to prioritise those key features, Stories were going away.

They also named the successors directly, describing both Community posts and Shorts as good alternatives for the same audience connection. Coverage at the time read it the way we did: Shorts had simply won.

Why Did YouTube Remove Stories?

Because Stories were competing with two features that did the same jobs better, and losing on both.

Shorts beat Stories at casual video for a reason worth understanding: Shorts get distributed to people who don’t subscribe to you. Stories only ever reached your existing subscribers. One was a growth surface, the other was a retention surface with a 7-day shelf life.

Community posts beat Stories at quick updates because a poll or a text post sat permanently on your channel where people could find it, instead of evaporating mid-week.

Honestly? We think the 10,000-subscriber gate was the deeper problem. It meant the creators who most needed a low-effort way to stay visible were locked out, and the ones who qualified already had better options. The feature never found the audience it was built for.

It’s the same story as IGTV, which Instagram folded into regular video and Reels. A separate format for a job the main product could absorb tends not to last.

Does YouTube Have Stories Like Instagram Now?

No. YouTube currently has no ephemeral, disappearing-content format at all. Nothing you post to YouTube expires on its own.

This matters more than it sounds, because it changes what you should be willing to publish.

Stories, on any platform, work partly because they’re disposable. You post the rough behind-the-scenes clip precisely because it’s gone by Thursday. Take away the expiry and the calculation changes: everything you publish on YouTube is a permanent entry in your channel’s library, and it will be recommended alongside your best work.

Our honest read: that’s a net win. The whole reason creators liked the low stakes of Stories was that the content didn’t have to be good. Content that doesn’t have to be good usually isn’t, and now you get lasting distribution in exchange for a slightly higher bar.

If genuinely disposable content is core to how you work, that behaviour still lives on Instagram. Our complete guide to Instagram Stories and our guide to Facebook Stories cover where that job moved.

Shorts or Posts: Which One Replaces What You Were Doing?

Use Shorts when it needs to be seen by new people

Shorts are your reach tool. They surface in the Shorts feed to people who’ve never heard of you, which is something Stories never did and Posts don’t do either.

The specs, from YouTube’s own Shorts documentation: up to 3 minutes long, maximum resolution 1080p, title capped at 100 characters.

Worth saying: the 3-minute ceiling is not a target. Most of what worked as a Story is 15 to 30 seconds of content, and stretching it to fill three minutes is the most common way we see Shorts underperform.

Use Posts when it’s for the people who already follow you

Posts, which YouTube used to call the Community tab, are where the non-video half of Stories went. Text updates, images, polls and quizzes.

From YouTube’s help documentation: you can post text on its own or with a video, image or GIF, choose between video, poll, quiz and image formats, and attach up to 10 images to a single post. YouTube also caps how many posts a channel can publish in any 24-hour period.

To use Posts you need advanced features enabled in YouTube Studio and a channel in good standing. Advanced features are unlocked by verifying your identity, which typically means ID or a short video selfie, so build a day or two into your plan if you’re setting this up for a client.

The format we’d push hardest is the poll. It takes about thirty seconds to make, it gives subscribers a reason to interact with your channel between uploads, and it tells you what to make next. That last part is the actual value. We’d take a poll over a behind-the-scenes clip most weeks.

Do Shorts Actually Pay Anything?

Yes, but through a pooled system rather than ads attached to your individual video, and the numbers are worth knowing before you build a strategy on them.

Ad revenue from the Shorts feed goes into a pool, gets allocated between creators based on their share of views, and monetising creators keep 45 percent of their allocated revenue, regardless of whether the Short used music. That last detail is a genuine improvement on how short-form music licensing used to work elsewhere.

To get into the YouTube Partner Program in the first place, YouTube’s stated thresholds are 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 qualified public watch hours in the last 12 months, or 10 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days.

Note the trap in those two routes. Watch hours from Shorts views in the Shorts feed do not count towards the 4,000-hour threshold. So a channel posting nothing but Shorts is on the 10-million-view path whether it intended to be or not, and 10 million views in 90 days is a considerably harder ask than 4,000 watch hours.

One forward-looking change to have on your radar: YouTube’s documentation states that from 1 February 2027, earning a share of Shorts ad revenue from the Creator Pool and YouTube Premium revenue in a given month will require at least 10 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days. If Shorts revenue is part of a client forecast, that’s the date to plan against.

Our position, and we give this advice often: treat Shorts as a discovery channel that occasionally pays, not as an income stream. The money in short-form has generally been in what it drives, whether that’s subscribers, long-form views, brand deals or sales, rather than in the revenue share itself.

How Often Should You Post Shorts?

Daily is sustainable for Shorts in a way it isn’t for long-form, because the production cost per piece is so much lower. Start at three or four a week and go up only if quality holds.

The reason the answer differs from long-form is worth internalising. One well-made video a week beats three rushed ones, because a weak long-form video costs you watch time and watch time is the currency. A weak Short costs you a few seconds of someone’s scroll. The downside risk is smaller, so the optimal frequency is higher.

That said, the same diminishing returns apply here as everywhere else. We’ve broken down the cadence question properly in how often you should post on social media, and the best time to post is worth reading once your cadence is steady.

If the bottleneck is production rather than planning, our list of budget-friendly content creator tools covers what you can get away with on a small setup.

FAQs

Do YouTube Stories still exist?

No. YouTube Stories were discontinued on 26 June 2023 and the feature has not returned in any form.

Most people asking this are not really checking a fact. They’re either following an outdated tutorial and assuming they’ve missed a setting, or they had Stories in their workflow and want to know what to do instead. Neither problem is solved by the word “no”, so here’s the rest.

The specifics of the shutdown: Stories stopped being creatable on 26 June 2023, and any Story already published expired on its normal 7-day schedule rather than being deleted early. Nothing was archived, so if you had Stories content you wanted, it’s gone. There is currently no ephemeral format anywhere on YouTube.

Where this trips people up is the guides. A large amount of content about YouTube Stories is still live and still ranking, written before mid-2023 and never updated, which sends people looking for a camera icon and a Story option that were removed years ago. If a tutorial tells you to look for it, check the publication date.

The tradeoff of the replacement: you lose the low-stakes feel of content that disappears, and you gain distribution that doesn’t expire.

Decision rule: if you wanted Stories for casual video, use Shorts. If you wanted them for quick updates to existing subscribers, use Posts. If you specifically needed content to disappear, that behaviour only exists on Instagram now.

Why did YouTube get rid of Stories?

To consolidate. YouTube said that with Community posts, Shorts, long-form and Live all available, it was prioritising those and letting Stories go.

The question behind the question is usually strategic: people want to know whether the same thing could happen to Shorts, and therefore how much to invest in it. That’s a reasonable worry and it has a reasonable answer.

Look at what distinguished Stories mechanically. Stories reached only your existing subscribers, expired after 7 days, were locked behind a 10,000-subscriber requirement, and worked on mobile only. Shorts are the opposite on every one of those: they reach non-subscribers, persist indefinitely, are open to everyone, and work everywhere. Shorts also has a revenue-sharing model attached to it, which Stories never did.

The pattern to actually learn from: platforms retire features that duplicate a job the main product can absorb. IGTV went the same way. A format with its own separate surface, its own gate and its own workflow is the one at risk, not the one wired into the core recommendation system.

The cost of betting on any single format is real, whichever you pick. Nothing is permanent.

Decision rule: invest in formats that feed the platform’s main recommendation surface, and keep your source files so a format change costs you a re-edit rather than a reshoot.

What’s the difference between YouTube Shorts and YouTube Stories?

Shorts are permanent and shown to people who don’t follow you. Stories were temporary, expired after 7 days, and only ever reached existing subscribers.

The comparison matters because it tells you how differently to treat the content. Stories were a retention tool, so rough was fine. Shorts are a discovery tool, which means a Short is often the first thing a stranger ever sees from you.

Practical differences worth knowing: Shorts run up to 3 minutes at a maximum of 1080p, they were available to every channel rather than gated at 10,000 subscribers, they stay on your channel and keep getting recommended for months, and they can earn a share of Shorts ad revenue at 45 percent of allocated revenue for monetising creators. Stories had none of that.

The failure mode we see most often in this transition is creators porting their Stories habits straight across. They post the same unedited phone clip with no hook, it gets shown to strangers who have no reason to care, it performs badly, and they conclude Shorts don’t work for them. The format didn’t change. The audience did.

The tradeoff: Shorts demand more from you per post than Stories ever did. In return they keep working long after you publish them.

Decision rule: before publishing a Short, check that it makes sense to someone who has never seen your channel. If it only makes sense to a regular, it belongs in a Post instead.

How many Shorts views do I need to get monetised?

10 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days, alongside 1,000 subscribers, if you’re taking the Shorts route into the YouTube Partner Program. The alternative route is 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 qualified public watch hours in the last 12 months.

What makes this question urgent for people is usually a suspicion that they’re on the harder path without having chosen it. Often they are.

Here’s the detail that decides it. Watch hours generated by Shorts views in the Shorts feed do not count towards the 4,000-hour threshold. So a Shorts-only channel cannot accumulate its way to the watch-hours route at all, no matter how much total view time it racks up. It is on the 10-million-view path by default. And 10 million views in a rolling 90-day window is a much steeper requirement than 4,000 watch hours, which a modest long-form channel can reach with a few thousand loyal viewers.

Also plan for the change ahead: YouTube’s documentation states that from 1 February 2027, monthly eligibility for a share of Shorts ad revenue from the Creator Pool and Premium revenue will itself require at least 10 million qualified Shorts views in the trailing 90 days.

The tradeoff of a mixed strategy is focus. Publishing both Shorts and long-form is more work than doing one well, and it’s still usually the right call, because it puts both routes in play.

Decision rule: if monetisation is the near-term goal, post enough long-form to chase 4,000 watch hours and use Shorts to drive subscribers towards it. Chase the 10-million route only if short-form is genuinely your format.

Can I still post quick updates to my subscribers without making a video?

Yes, through Posts, which YouTube used to call the Community tab. You can publish text, images, polls and quizzes, including up to 10 images in a single post.

This is the part of the Stories shutdown that genuinely left a gap for a while, and most creators we talk to still underuse the replacement. It’s the cheapest engagement available on the platform and it sits behind a tab most people never open in Studio.

The requirements are the bit that catches people: you need advanced features enabled on your channel and a channel in good standing with no active Community Guidelines strikes. Enabling advanced features means verifying your identity, usually by ID or a short video selfie, and it isn’t instant. YouTube also limits how many posts a channel can publish in a 24-hour period.

The failure mode is treating Posts as an announcement board. A channel posts nothing but “new video out now” links, subscribers stop looking, and then the one post that mattered reaches nobody. Posts work when they ask something of the reader, which is why polls outperform links.

The cost is small but real: Posts reach your existing audience only, so they will never grow your channel. They keep the audience you have warm.

Decision rule: use Posts to ask and Shorts to reach. If a post doesn’t invite a response, it’s probably better as a community poll about what you make next.

Will YouTube bring Stories back?

There’s no indication that it will, and no ephemeral format has appeared on YouTube in the years since. We would not plan around it returning.

People asking this are usually hoping to avoid rebuilding a workflow. Fair enough, but the reasoning points the other way: YouTube removed Stories to consolidate around features tied to its recommendation system, and reintroducing a subscriber-only, expiring format would undo exactly that.

There’s a structural reason too. Stories work on platforms built around a friends-and-following graph, where the audience is people who chose you. YouTube’s growth engine is recommendation to strangers, and disappearing content is close to worthless to a recommendation system. It has no time to accumulate signal before it’s gone.

The mistake we’d warn against is leaving a gap in your plan for a feature that might come back. We’ve seen teams hold off on building a Shorts habit for exactly this reason, and lose a year of compounding distribution waiting.

The cost of committing to Shorts and Posts instead is that you may occasionally rebuild if YouTube changes direction. That’s true of every platform decision you will ever make.

Decision rule: build on the features wired into the recommendation system, and treat any subscriber-only format as a nice-to-have rather than a foundation.

Conclusion

YouTube Stories are gone and they’re not coming back, and after three years of working with what replaced them, we think that’s fine.

The job split cleanly in two. Shorts do the casual video, reach strangers, and keep earning long after you publish. Posts do the quick updates and keep your existing subscribers involved between uploads.

You lost content that disappears. You gained content that compounds. On balance, for anyone building something rather than just posting, that’s the better trade.

Start with three Shorts a week and one poll. That’s a complete YouTube presence for most small brands, and it’s a genuinely small commitment. If you want a second opinion on whether YouTube is even the right platform for what you sell, our rundown of the social platforms worth considering in India is the place to start, and you can always talk it through with us at AB Media.