YouTube's intent in the creation of YouTube Shorts in 2019 was to compete with TikTok, an online video platform for short clips. The company started by experimenting with vertical videos up to a length of 30 seconds in their own section within the YouTube homepage. This early beta was released only to a small number of people.

Shortly after TikTok was restricted in India on June 29, 2020, the YouTube Shorts beta was made