YouTube Citation Generator

Copy four things from the video page into the form: the title, the channel name, the upload date and the link. Add the uploader's real name, the date you watched it or the video length if you have them. The generator writes the APA 7, MLA 9 and Chicago citations as you type; copy the one you need, and the italics come with it.

Channel Name. (2024, March 5). Title of video [Video]. YouTube. URL. The title is in italics and in sentence case. The generator above fills this in from the details you enter.

The person or organization that uploaded it. If the channel belongs to a person and you know their real name, use the real name; APA then adds the channel in square brackets, as in Smith, J. [Nature Lab]. If you only know the channel, the channel name is the author.

YouTube. In APA 7 it goes after the [Video] label as the publisher; in MLA 9 it is the container, in italics; in Chicago it appears as "YouTube video". You don't name Google or the uploader as the publisher.

In the description box under the video, next to the view count. On phones, tap the description to open it. If a video shows only a relative date such as "2 years ago", open the description to see the full date.

APA uses the author and year: (Nature Lab, 2024). MLA uses the author or, with no author, a short form of the title: ("How Bees Build"). Chicago author-date uses author and year without a comma: (Nature Lab 2024). To point at a moment in the video, add a timestamp, for example (Nature Lab, 2024, 3:15).

Add the full citation to your reference list (APA), works cited (MLA) or bibliography/reference list (Chicago), sorted by the first word, which is the author or, in MLA without a known author, the title. Use a hanging indent, as the citations above are shown.

Only for MLA, and even there it is optional; it helps when a video might be removed or changed. APA 7 and Chicago don't use an access date for a YouTube video.