The Shorts like button is a heart: keep captions clear of it

Yes. On a Short, the like control is a heart, not the thumbs-up used on long videos. YouTube's help page says to use thumbs up under the video player, or "tap the Heart for Shorts", and the thumbs-down dislike it describes is for long-form videos and livestreams. The page adds that this update is gradually rolling out to all users, so you may still see the old icons on some devices.

There is no like button you can add to your file. The heart belongs to the Shorts player. What you control is the picture: text or logos that sit where the heart, comments and description appear will be covered. This post lists what YouTube says about the heart and the creator heart on comments, then shows how to set burned-in captions so they stay clear.

What does the heart on a Short do?

For a signed-in viewer, liking a video adds it to a private Liked videos playlist. The page says a maximum of 5,000 videos can be displayed in that playlist, and that you can remove a like from the playlist page. To undo a like, select the icon again.

That makes the heart a private bookmark as well as a signal to the creator. It is separate from the Save button, which puts a Short in a playlist you choose; see where the Save button is on Shorts.

What is a creator heart on a comment?

A creator heart is a different heart. If a viewer comments on the Posts tab or the watch page, the creator can heart that comment. The commenter sees the creator's avatar with a small heart on the comment and may get a notification, depending on their opt-in settings, that a channel owner "loves your comment."

For creators with many comments, YouTube Studio has heart suggestions. It lists recent comments it identifies as having positive intent, and you can heart them all with Add hearts to all, or clear single suggestions. The help page says this is only in the YouTube Studio mobile app: open Community, then Comments to ❤️, then View comments. If the option is missing, there may not be enough comments to suggest.

Where should text not go on a vertical video?

YouTube's own editor shows you. In the Shorts editor, as you drag text or stickers, visual guides appear showing where the like button, comments and video description might sit. Dragging an overlay near the edge shows animated white lines for a non-safe area that may be partly hidden on some devices, and icons appear where viewer controls would cover it.

The catch is that these guides only appear inside YouTube's editor. If you burn captions into the file before upload, you have to place them yourself. Sume's video captions endpoint has a design object whose placement and typography fields move the line and cap its width, so you can set that once per batch.

Which fields move a burned-in caption?

Import your finished clip into Sume first, since the captions job takes a public HTTPS video URL; the media inputs page covers that. Sume's doc notes that numbers outside a documented range return a 400 rather than rendering wrong.

Example request

This burns two authored caption cards with a narrower text box. The cues path skips speech-to-text, so it also works on a silent clip. Each accepted standalone caption job is $0.20 for videos up to 60 seconds under the current fixed estimate, per the doc; confirm live in GET /v1/catalog.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-captions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: heart-clear-001" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/example/clean.mp4",
    "style": "punch",
    "cues": [
      {"text": "Double tap the heart", "start": 0.5, "end": 2.5},
      {"text": "Save it for later", "start": 2.5, "end": 4.5}
    ],
    "design": {
      "placement": {"anchor_ratio": 0.45},
      "typography": {"safe_width_ratio": 0.7}
    }
  }'

What can't Sume do here?

Sume cannot add a like, a creator heart or a comment sticker, and it cannot read your Short's like count. Those are in the YouTube app and Studio. Sume's part ends at a clean vertical file whose text avoids the controls. After upload, open the Short on a phone and check it against the real player, because device screens differ.