Feature
YouTube is the world's biggest library of educational content, meetings, tutorials, and presentations. VidNotes makes all of it searchable and summarizable. Paste any YouTube link into VidNotes on iOS, the web app, or use the Chrome extension to transcribe without leaving your browser. You'll get a full transcript with timestamps in seconds. If the video already has captions, VidNotes pulls them directly for near-instant results. If not, the audio runs through the transcription engine just like a local file. Say you're researching a topic across multiple YouTube lectures. Instead of watching five hours of content, you can import all five videos, get transcripts in minutes, search across them for specific terms, and generate summaries to figure out which ones cover what you need. The Chrome extension is especially handy here, letting you transcribe any YouTube video with one click while you browse.
Copy any YouTube URL: standard videos, Shorts, playlist items. VidNotes normalizes the URL automatically, strips tracking parameters, and extracts the video ID with case-sensitive parsing. The handler converts Shorts URLs (youtube.com/shorts/ID) to standard watch URLs and removes parameters like utm_source, si, and feature that platforms tack on for tracking. So any YouTube link you copy from any context just works, no manual editing.
VidNotes first checks for existing YouTube captions through its VidNavigator API integration. When they're available, you get a transcript in seconds, typically under 3 seconds no matter the video length since it's pulling pre-existing caption data. When captions aren't available, a RapidAPI integration provides an alternative caption source. As a final fallback, the audio gets extracted and run through the full Whisper transcription pipeline, so you always get a result.
Once transcribed, YouTube videos get the same features as any other video. AI summaries, flashcards, action items, AI chat, search, export. The video plays inline so you can follow along with the transcript using time-synced playback. Tap any timestamp to jump the video player to that moment. YouTube imports are stored as VideoProject entities in SwiftData with source type tracking, so they show up alongside local videos in your library with proper thumbnails and metadata.
Online course students
Transcribe course lectures on YouTube to build searchable study materials with flashcards and summaries. Turn a YouTube playlist into a full study library by importing each video, generating a flashcard deck per lecture, and using AI Chat to ask questions across your entire course transcript collection.
Content creators
Transcribe competitor videos or your own uploads to extract hooks, quotes, and repurposable content for scripts and captions. Export transcripts as Markdown to feed into your content pipeline, and use summaries to audit what topics you've already covered across dozens of published videos.
Researchers
Transcribe conference talks, interviews, and panel discussions to make them searchable and quotable for academic work. Import multiple related videos and use AI Chat to ask targeted questions across each transcript, building a searchable archive of primary source material without the manual transcription grind.
VidNotes uses a three-tier fallback strategy for YouTube transcription. The primary method uses the VidNavigator API to check for existing captions via the /transcript endpoint. When those aren't available, a RapidAPI integration provides an alternative caption source from a different data provider. As a final fallback, the video routes to the VidNavigator /transcribe endpoint, which extracts and processes the audio through the Whisper transcription engine. Layered like this, you get the fastest possible result when captions exist and a reliable fallback when they don't, with the same accuracy across all three paths.
YouTube Shorts get converted to standard video URLs automatically before processing. The TranscriptionService normalizes /shorts/ paths to /watch?v= format and strips all tracking parameters while preserving the case-sensitive video ID. So you can paste a Shorts link copied from the mobile app, a shared link with tracking parameters, or a URL from any regional YouTube domain, and get the same full transcript and AI features as any longer video without manual URL editing.
YouTube transcripts get stored locally on your device as SwiftData entities, just like local video transcripts. They stay searchable and accessible offline, and you can export them in any supported format. The VideoProject entity tracks the source URL, video title, duration, and thumbnail. The VideoTranscript entity stores the full text, individual segments with timestamps, and any AI-generated content like summaries, flashcards, and action items. Local-first means your YouTube transcript library grows on-device and never depends on API availability to access content you've already processed.
No account required. Paste a video link and see it in action.