YouTube has announced a range of new tweaks and updates, which are actually fairly significant, in different ways, but particularly if you’re looking to make Shorts a focus heading into the new year.

First off, YouTube’s giving Shorts creators to capacity to choose a frame from their clip as their thumbnail within the Shorts creation process, starting with Android users.

To be clear, creators can already choose a thumbnail for their Shorts within YouTube Studio, but this new process will make it easier to do so within the original upload flow, which could help to streamline the process.

To select a thumbnail frame for your Shorts (on Android):

• Record or import a video with the Shorts camera then navigate to the final upload screen
• Tap the pencil icon that is overlaid over the thumbnail of your video
• Scrub along your video’s timeline to pick a thumbnail then hit ‘Done’
• Upload your Short

YouTube says that it’s currently not possible to change the thumbnail after your Short has been uploaded, but it is looking to add this functionality in future.

This update is rolling out to all creators on Android from today.

And if you’re looking to make Shorts a bigger focus, this could also help – YouTube has launched a new series of Shorts mythbusting clips on the YouTube Creators channel, which covers various aspects of the Shorts process, including questions about the algorithm, common tips, best practices and more.

Worth a look.

On another front, YouTube has publicly launched its new automated system for overdubbing your YouTube content into another language.

Called ‘Aloud’, the new process, developed by YouTube’s ‘Area 120’ experimental project team, can take a video in English and translate it into several other languages, which YouTube says could be a great way to expand your audience reach.

As per YouTube:

“You can dub a video with Aloud in a couple of hours and it comes at no cost. This tool might be one of the easiest ways to expand your audience, because 80% of the world doesn't speak English.”

Of course, you then have the speakers’ lips not matching up to the audio - like those foreign language films that you accidentally start watching on Netflix - but dependent on your content, that might not be a big deal

You can sign up for the waitlist on Aloud website to join the beta test pool for the option.

YouTube’s also launching a new chat stream engagement option called ‘YouTube Emotes’, which will enable viewers to share little graphics within their comments on clips.

Much like Twitch emotes, the additions provide another engagement option, to facilitate more expression within chat streams.

As explained by YouTube:

“We’re starting with emotes created for Gaming but are working on bringing even more themes of emotes in the future, so stay tuned for emotes for even more communities.”

They’ll also, eventually, provide another subscription incentive option, with YouTube also noting that ‘channel membership custom emojis’ will soon be another option to choose from within the emotes set. On Twitch, exclusive channel emotes are only available to paying subscribers.

To use YouTube Emotes, you can click/tap on the smiley face icon in live chat or comments, which will then bring up a listing of all of the emotes and emojis available to you in that stream/thread.

On a related note, YouTube’s also launching a broader range of priced packages for Super Thanks (coming soon), in order to drive more revenue opportunities for creators, which is another way to engage within chat streams.

Finally, YouTube says that it’s expanding its comment warnings and user time-outs for repeated violations of comment rules, which it first launched in testing earlier this year.

Quite a few new updates from the ol’ YT, and some handy little additions that could play a significant role in your process over the holidays.