How to Auto-Reply to YouTube Shorts Comments (2026): Keyword Replies With Your Link

A Short that takes off can pull in hundreds of comments in a day — and the most valuable ones are the shortest: “link?”, “price?”, “which app?”. You can’t answer them all by hand, and YouTube Studio won’t do it for you: saved replies still need a tap on every comment.

Auto-replies fix that. Here’s how they work on Shorts, and how to set them up from your phone.

How Shorts comment auto-reply works

• Same API as long videos. A Short is a YouTube video, so its comments come through Google’s official YouTube Data API. You connect with Google sign-in — no password shared.
• No DMs on YouTube. Every reply is public, under the comment. The link goes in the reply.
• Checked about every 5 minutes. YouTube doesn’t push new comments to apps, so yudochat checks your Short regularly and answers each new top-level comment once.

The “comment LINK” play on Shorts

Shorts are short — there’s no time to explain where the link is. The keyword trick does it in three words:

1. On screen and in the description: “Comment LINK and I’ll reply with it.”
2. Keyword: LINK — it matches as a word anywhere in the comment and ignores capitals, so “link pls 🙏” counts.
3. Reply: “Here you go, {{username}} 👉 https://yourbrand.com/guide”

Everyone who comments the word gets the link under their comment — and every one of those comments and replies adds activity to the Short.

Keyword or every comment?

	Keyword (LINK, PRICE)	Every comment
Best for	Sending a link, price or resource	Thanking everyone on a fresh upload
Put a link in the reply?	Yes — they asked for it	No — keep it a thank-you
Skips comments that contain links (spam)	—	✓

Set it up (about a minute)

1. Install yudochat from Google Play or the App Store and sign up free.
2. Connect YouTube with the Google account that owns your channel.
3. Tap +, choose YouTube, and pick your Short from the list.
4. Choose “Only comments with my keyword” and type LINK — or every comment.
5. Write the reply. Add two or three versions so replies don’t look copy-pasted.
6. Go live. Test by commenting from a different Google account — your own comments are ignored.

Limits worth knowing

• Daily replies per channel: 50 on Free, 500 on paid plans — set by YouTube’s API quota. Extra comments wait for the next day rather than being dropped.
• Top-level comments only. Replies inside a thread aren’t answered, so the bot never talks to itself or interrupts conversations between viewers.
• Monthly total: Free answers up to 300 people a month across all your platforms; Creator ₹199/month answers 5,000.

Make your Shorts replies sound human

• Use {{username}} — it becomes the commenter’s channel name.
• Answer the actual question in the reply itself.
• Need ideas? Copy from our YouTube comment reply templates.

More on long videos, quotas and strategy in the full YouTube auto-reply guide, or read it in Hindi.