Automatic Shorts: set it once, review every morning

§1What Automatic is, and who it is for

Most Shorts channels do not stall for lack of ideas. They stall on the ordinary days when nobody sits down to make anything, and a gap of a week quietly becomes a gap of a month. Automatic exists for those days. Its own line in the app puts it plainly: "Tell us a topic once, we make them every night."

If you see the "Automatic" chip on the Studio composer, open it and you will find a short setup sheet. You tell it once what your channel is about, how many Shorts you want a day, and how they should sound and look. From then on the studio makes them every night, and in the morning they are waiting in your Library. Automatic is for full members: during the introductory first month the sheet tells you "Automatic Shorts are for full members.", and it may not be visible on every account.

Automatic is not an uploader: ViewMade never uploads to YouTube, so every automatic Short reaches your channel only because you downloaded it and published it yourself. Nor is it a different engine: each one is a standard Short, made the same way as one you start by hand. Automatic changes when the work happens, not the standard of the film.

§2Setting it up properly

The sheet has a few short steps, and the first one decides most of what you will get. Under "What is it about?" you choose between "A niche" and "My topics". A niche is a single line that describes your territory, and the studio plans concrete topics inside it before each night's run. My topics is a list you write yourself, one topic per line, up to 60 lines. Use a niche for variety without the planning, your own list when you know exactly which stories you want.

A good niche line is wide enough to hold hundreds of different stories and narrow enough that a viewer knows what your channel is. "History" is too wide, and "the Teton dam" is one Short, not a channel. Something like "engineering disasters: bridges, dams and buildings that failed, and what caused them" sits in the right place, and so does "ancient Rome: daily life, engineering and the strangest decisions of its emperors". The topics the studio writes from a niche follow strict rules of their own: one concrete subject with one hook, a statement that holds back its answer rather than a question, something that can be filmed from archive, news or stock footage, and no invented statistics. A niche that points at filmed things, such as events, places and machines, gives them the most room.

If you write your own list, each line should be one thing a camera could film and the one odd fact about it, the same rule as the topic box in Studio. Compare these:

• Strong: "the night the Teton dam gave way", "the bridge that tore itself apart in the wind", "the volcano that made a brand-new island in one week".
• Weak: "dams" (a whole category), "why do bridges fall?" (a bare question), "Enzo Ferrari" (just a name with no angle).

The optional "Who it is for" field takes a short description of your viewer, such as "history fans, new investors, car lovers". We suggest filling it in, because a Short written for a curious newcomer and one written for a long-time enthusiast are not the same film.

Next comes "How many a day?". The maximum depends on your plan, but the maximum is rarely the right answer. Pick the number you can genuinely review each morning, because review is part of the job, and YouTube itself advises prioritising consistent quality over a high frequency of uploads². A sensible starting point is one or two a day for the first week. Below the setting, the preview tells you how many videos will be in your library tomorrow morning and how many days your balance covers at this setting. Read that coverage line before you start: it is the simplest way to avoid the plan pausing itself on a night when the balance runs short.

Under "Voice and look" you choose the language, the voice and the caption look, the same choices you have on the composer. Research, script, voice and captions are made natively in that language, not translated. Finally, tick "Email me when they are ready" if you want one email in your morning, sent only after nights when something was made. Then press "Start automatic Shorts". Topics are planned before tonight's run, and the preview shows the production hours in your own time.

§3What happens while you sleep

Automatic runs in the studio's quiet hours, which fall at night in Europe and Türkiye. It also runs at the lowest priority in the queue. If you start a Short by hand late in the evening, yours goes first and the plan waits its turn, so your own orders are never delayed by it.

Each planned topic then goes through exactly the same steps as a Short you start yourself. First comes the free footage search: the planner looks at a few angles of the topic and checks how much real footage stands behind each, and the angle with the most real footage wins. If no angle has enough, the topic is skipped, nothing is made, and nothing is charged. Credits are only taken when a production actually starts. If a production starts and then fails, for example because the usable footage turned out to be too thin or the film did not pass ViewMade's quality review, the credits come back automatically.

What lands there is a complete Short, the same package a hand-made one gives you: the vertical film with narration and captions, a title, a description, tags, a thumbnail and a footage credits list.

§4The morning routine

Open your Library and choose the "Automatic" filter, or look for the shelf called "Made automatically". If you turned on the email, it tells you when there is something to look at. Then work through each Short in turn:

1. Watch it from start to finish, with the sound on.
2. Check the claims that carry the story, such as a date, a place or a name. If one looks wrong, do not publish it.
3. Use "Copy title", then copy the description and the tags. Adjust the title if you can say it better for your audience.
4. Copy the "Footage credits" into your description, to credit the original creators.
5. Use "Download", or "Everything (.zip)" for the file, the thumbnail and the credits together, and upload it yourself in YouTube Studio. Answer the AI use question honestly: realistic altered or synthetic content must be disclosed, and disclosure on its own does not limit a video's audience or monetisation⁴.
6. If a Short is weak, or too close to one you published recently, simply do not upload it. When one is especially good, "Make another like this" reopens the composer with the same subject and settings.

Finish by looking ahead. The setup sheet shows "The next 7 topics", each marked with where it came from: your niche, your list, or added by you. Remove any you would not want on your channel, and use "Add a topic" for the ideas you had over breakfast.

§5Keeping the channel varied and original

Any guide that encourages automation owes you an honest account of YouTube's rules. In July 2025 YouTube renamed its repetitious content policy to inauthentic content, covering content that is repetitive or mass-produced, and said such content has always been ineligible for monetisation¹. Among the examples it gives are similar or repetitive content with minimal variation across videos, templated storylines with little narrative or educational value, and AI-generated content made with generic or unoriginal templates that gives the impression of mass production¹.

Read those examples closely and they describe sameness, not tools. YouTube says videos made with AI can be recommended as broadly as videos made without AI³. Template spam is the same story with the names swapped, the same slideshow with nothing to say. A niche of researched Shorts is a different thing: each one is about a different real event, built from its own research, its own script and its own footage. Reusing the same intro or outro is allowed when the bulk of each video differs¹. None of this is a guarantee, and nothing, ViewMade included, can promise that a channel will be monetised. What you control is the variety going in and the review coming out.

• Keep the niche wide enough that topics genuinely differ, and add your own subjects to the next 7 when you notice a pattern repeating.
• Remove topics that are a near copy of something you have already published.
• Never skip the review, and never upload a Short you have not watched.

§6Pausing, the three auto-pauses, and starting tonight

You can stop the plan at any time with "Pause". Your settings are kept, and "Start again" picks up where you left off. The plan can also pause itself, and the status line tells you why:

• "Paused: your balance cannot pay for the next Short". Add credits, then start it again. Watching the coverage line in the preview prevents this.
• "Paused: your plan does not include automatic Shorts right now". Automatic is for full members, so this usually follows a change of plan. Check your plan in settings.
• "Paused: nothing left to make, add topics". Your list has run dry. Add topics to your list or under the next 7, or switch to a niche.

Here is how to set it up in about ten minutes tonight:

1. Open the sheet

   In Studio, tap the Automatic chip on the composer.

2. Describe your channel

   Choose a niche and write one clear line, or paste ten or more of your own topics, one per line. Add who it is for.

3. Choose a pace you can review

   Start with one or two a day, and read how many days your balance covers.

4. Set the voice and look

   Pick the language, the voice and a caption look, and turn on the morning email.

5. Start, then check the next 7

   Press Start automatic Shorts, look over the next 7 topics, remove any you would not publish, and go to bed.