Turn long videos into vertical shorts, on your own machine.
Clipsmith is a desktop app for creators. It transcribes a long video with word-level timestamps, cuts the moments you pick into 9:16 clips without ever cutting mid-word, and publishes them straight to your own YouTube and TikTok accounts.
What it does
Transcription, framing and rendering all run on your computer. There is no Clipsmith server, no upload of your footage, and no account to create with us.
Local transcription
Whisper runs on your own GPU or CPU and produces word-level timestamps. Your audio is never sent anywhere.
Clean 9:16 cuts
Clip boundaries snap to word edges and grow out to whole sentences, so a short never opens or ends mid-word.
Automatic framing
Face detection keeps the speaker in frame as the vertical crop moves, with a plain centre crop as the fallback.
Drafted captions
A language model on your own machine drafts a title and description for each platform from what is said in the clip. You edit them before anything is posted.
Publish and schedule
Send a finished clip to one or several of your connected YouTube channels and TikTok accounts, now or at a time you choose.
Your keys, your disk
Access tokens are encrypted with your operating system’s own key store and stay in the app’s data folder on your computer.
How it works
Four steps, all on your computer.
- Point it at a videoA local file, or a YouTube URL you have the right to use.
- Read the transcript and pick your momentsClipsmith transcribes the video and writes a timestamped transcript. You choose the clips, or let it suggest them.
- RenderEach clip is cut at word boundaries, reframed to 9:16, captioned, and written to your output folder.
- Publish, if you want toConnect your own YouTube and TikTok accounts and send clips to them. This step is entirely optional — Clipsmith is fully usable without connecting any account.
What Clipsmith asks for, and why
Publishing is opt-in. When you connect an account, Clipsmith requests the narrowest permissions that let it upload a clip and show you that account’s own numbers. Nothing else.
| Scope | Why Clipsmith needs it |
|---|---|
youtube.upload |
To upload a rendered clip to the channel you selected, and to set its title, description and privacy status. This is the only way an app can place a video on your channel. |
youtube.readonly |
To list the channels your Google account owns so you can pick which one to post to, to show that channel’s name, avatar, subscriber and view counts in the app, and to confirm an upload finished. |
| Scope | Why Clipsmith needs it |
|---|---|
user.info.basic | To show which account you connected — display name and avatar — so you cannot post to the wrong one. |
user.info.profile | To show that account’s username beside it in the account list. |
user.info.stats | To show that account’s follower, like and video counts on its card in the app. |
video.upload | To send a clip to your TikTok inbox as a draft, which you then review and post yourself in the TikTok app. |
video.publish | To post a clip directly, with the caption and privacy setting you chose, when you ask for direct posting instead of a draft. |
Clipsmith never reads your other videos, your messages, your comments, or anyone else’s content. It cannot create accounts, follow anyone, or change your profile. You can disconnect an account inside the app at any time, and revoke it independently at Google account permissions or in TikTok under Settings and privacy → Security and permissions → Apps and services. The full detail is in the privacy policy.
Contact
Clipsmith is an independent project. Questions about the app, about your data, or a request to delete it all go to the same place.
Clipsmith is in active development and builds are not yet publicly released. Email the address above to hear when they are.