Frozen Timestamps
Your timestamp freezes the instant you press Alt+N and begin typing, not 30 seconds later when you click Save. The context is never lost.
NEW
Never lose the thought you had while watching
YouTube Notes
Your thoughts. Your words. At the exact second.
AI can summarize what the speaker said, but it can’t capture what you thought. YouTube Notes freezes your timestamp the second you start typing, so your insights stay anchored to the exact moment you learned them.
100% Free · Local-first & Private · Start without an account — sign in to sync across devices
Features
Everything you need to learn from video
A focused toolkit that lives beside the player — no tab switching, no lost thoughts.
Instant Cross-Video Search
Remember a concept but forgot which 2-hour lecture covered it? Search any keyword across all your past videos in milliseconds.
Tags & Filtering
Organize notes with tags and filter to find exactly what you need — synced to your account.
Community Notes
Publish a note to a per-video community feed and see what other viewers shared.
Cloud Sync
Your notes follow you across devices and browsers, backed by your own Google account.
Range Notes & Jump Back
Capture full multi-minute explanations (e.g. 14:10 – 18:35) or single moments. Click any note to jump straight back to that exact second.
Bookmarks & Folders
Keep any note, video or channel in one private library, filed into folders up to five levels deep.
Linked Notes
Write [[a link]] between notes, and every note shows what points back at it.
Progress Dashboard
See how long you've kept each video, how far through it you got, and how much you captured from it.
How it Works
From watching to remembering in 3 steps
How serious learners capture and retain knowledge from video.
1
Press Alt + N While Watching
An idea sparks while learning. Hit the shortcut to freeze the moment without touching your mouse.
2
Write in Your Own Words
Capture your synthesis, code ideas, or questions. Playback keeps rolling while your thought is preserved.
3
Retrieve in One Click
Weeks later, search any keyword in your library and jump straight back to that exact second of explanation.
Your data & privacy
How YouTube Notes uses your Google data
We ask for the minimum needed to save and sync your notes — nothing more.
When you sign in with Google, YouTube Notes uses your basic profile — name, email address and profile picture — to create and identify your account. The extension never touches your YouTube watch history, never acts on your behalf, and never sells your data. Read our Privacy Policy for the full details.
A closer look
Designed to disappear into your workflow
Clean, fast and right where you need it — beside the video.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Everything else you might be wondering about.
Yes. Your notes are yours. They are stored securely, never sold, and never shared with third parties. You can export or delete everything at any time.
Google Sign-In lets us sync your notes securely across your devices without you managing another password. We only request your basic profile — never your watch history.
Absolutely. Export your notes as JSON, a self-contained HTML page, or Markdown at any time, so your knowledge is never locked in.
Yes — YouTube Notes is completely free. Your notes sync to your own Google account, so there is nothing to buy.
Yes. Publish a note to the video's community feed for other viewers to see, or export your notes to a file to share however you like.
Changelog
What's new
Every improvement we ship, in one place.
v1.22.2 Improved Notes on your phone, and colours that follow the page September 2026
- Notes now work on the mobile site. On m.youtube.com the card never appeared at all — the extension was waiting for a sidebar that mobile YouTube doesn't have. It now sits between the video's details and the comments, and the whole section is sized for a phone: bigger touch targets, an input that no longer makes iOS zoom the page, and the note's buttons on a row of their own
- Scrubbing while you write now moves the note's timestamp. Your note's time is frozen the moment you start typing — that is what stops a long note drifting — but nothing released it again when you went looking for the moment you meant. Near the start of a video, every note used to land on 0:00
- The Practice tab is readable on a dark page at last, the timestamp pill is no longer white on white in light theme, and the percentage inside the Focus ring appears — it had never been visible in any released build
- The popup now opens once per new version, so an update is something you meet rather than something you go looking for. And syncing is one line instead of a ten-row checklist
- The extension called itself “YouTube Extension” in every language but English. The name in the popup, in Settings, in the dashboard sidebar and on the notes card was being translated rather than kept as a name, so ten languages showed a generic label while the browser's own extension list showed the real one. Every language now says the same thing
v1.22.1 New Notes that survive fullscreen September 2026
- Your notes stay with you in fullscreen. The notes panel lives in YouTube's right-hand column, and fullscreen doesn't so much hide that column as leave it out of the picture — which is why note-taking used to stop the moment you went fullscreen. The panel now moves onto the video as a side panel and moves back when you leave, with whatever you were typing intact. The arrow on the edge pushes it aside without leaving fullscreen
- Four ways to draw the Focus card on your home page. Progress leads with the number, Card is the full-width version with the session details, Strip is a single line that gives the feed its height back, and Resume puts the video you were last on in front of you as the thing to click
- The Focus card now shows something true for every goal. A goal like “finish the migration chapter” has no percentage to show, and the card used to answer that by quietly falling back to a different style — so the default was invisible for the most common kind of goal. It keeps its ring now and shows the session clock instead
v1.22.0 New A session with a goal, and a month you can give away September 2026
- Focus Mode — a session with a goal, not a list of things to hide. You say what you came for, a clock runs, and ending the session asks one question: did you get it? Off by default, and it adds nothing to any page until you switch it on
- Progress inside a session is real — a goal counts progress exactly as Playlists and Courses do, so “3 of 5” means the same thing everywhere. Playlist, watch-N-videos and study-for-N-minutes goals get a bar; learn this topic deliberately does not. And it interrupts you twice a session at most, never on the first video you wander to
- Invite a friend and you both get a month. Share an eight-character invite code; your friend gets a free month of Standard sync, and so do you — once they have actually started using it. Months stack, so two friends in one week is sixty days, not thirty
- The invite code is the thing, not the link — eight characters you can read aloud across a table. There is a shareable page for when a link is easier, and the code rides along in the message either way. Your code sits in the popup with Copy and Share; how many you invited, how many started using it, and the months you earned are in Settings → Plan & Sync
v1.21.0 New Advice you act on, not just record September 2026
- A note remembers what was said; nothing ever asked whether you did it. Mark a tip with ⚡ and the new Practice tab asks you about it later — not yet, tried, doing, or a habit. What you log is dated and kept, so months later “did this video change anything” has an actual answer. Reviews are spaced rather than due: going well earns you silence instead of a guilt list
- Exports that Obsidian and Notion actually accept. Notes could always leave as Markdown, but the generic file landed badly in the two apps people keep notes in — no properties or tags in Obsidian, stray characters in Notion. Both are proper destinations now, and Copy for Notion turns a paste into real blocks, with every timestamp still a link back into the video
- The row of actions under a note is no longer a blur — they are drawn icons now, taking their colour from the page and its theme. Five looks ship, in Settings, because nobody agrees about how dense a toolbar should be
- The notes card stays at the top of the column beside the video. It used to sit behind YouTube’s own panel and could be pushed further down by another extension using the same spot — so the thing you installed this for was the thing you had to scroll to find. It takes the top now and keeps it, and steps aside gracefully if another extension insists
v1.20.1 Improved One listing, in every language it ships in September 2026
- The name and summary you see in the store now read the same everywhere, with the new wording translated into all fourteen languages the browser listing carries
- Hovering the toolbar icon gives you the product name again, not a sentence — the tooltip now has a short name of its own, instead of echoing the full store title
v1.20.0 New Notes that keep the moment you meant September 2026
- A note now lands where you meant it, not where the video got to. It used to take its timestamp the instant you pressed Save — and nothing pauses while you write, so it recorded wherever playback had reached by the time you finished. The error grew with the length of the thought: a quick phrase landed about 8 seconds late, a considered paragraph nearly 30. The timestamp is frozen the moment you start typing, and the chip in the rail shows exactly what Save will store
- New notes are stamped 5 seconds earlier on purpose, because you decide to write something down a beat after the thing worth noting was said — adjustable, or off for the exact second. Press ⏱️ yourself and the exact second is always used; you chose it. Alt + N starts a note without touching the mouse: it stamps the moment, opens the box and puts the cursor in it. And if you want the video held while you write, that is now a setting — off by default, because your notes already keep the right time without it
- Reset how far you watched, from the bookmark row. Progress is deliberately the furthest you ever reached, so it never walks backwards — which left nothing to do about a percentage recorded by accident, or a video you are starting again on purpose. The ⋮ on each row now offers Mark as watched and Reset progress. A reset clears the number on this device and in your account; your notes and bookmarks are untouched
- Notes is somewhere you go, not something that covers what you were watching. It opens on the home feed at its own address — youtube.com/#Notes — so nothing keeps playing behind the panel while you read it. The Plan tab now says how much has slipped past its day, as a red count you can see while you are on Videos or Courses
- Settings ▸ Language now means the extension's own pages: Settings, the Dashboard and the popup. The notes panel on a watch page goes back to following YouTube's own language, so it always reads in the same language as the page around it — and Chinese now carries those strings too. A note also takes bold and italic inline, and the menu beside your avatar marks an entry you have not opened yet, once
- The toolbar icon is sharp, and fills its box — it used to draw noticeably smaller and softer than the extensions beside it. The same work takes the download from 6.3 MB to 531 KB
- Fixes: playlist notes on YouTube's newer playlist layout, which had stopped finding the live page. The menu beside your avatar stays on screen when the page reads right-to-left. A study plan made on one device is reconciled with the one already in your account, instead of the newer edit losing. Permissions were narrowed to only the services the extension actually uses, instead of the much broader access it used to ask for
v1.19.0 New A plan for what you saved, and a note on every playlist September 2026
- Study Plan. Bookmarks are good at collecting; nothing here asked when you were actually going to watch any of it. Point it at a playlist or a bookmark folder, choose a pace — 20 minutes a day, or two videos — and the pile becomes a schedule with a finish line. The Plan tab opens on today, never on a backlog: a week at a glance, then what's due, what slipped, and what's coming
- A pace, not a deadline. “20 minutes a day” is a promise people keep; “finish by the 20th” is one they break. Say the pace and it tells you the finish date that follows — change one and watch the other move. Miss a few days and you get one line, not a wall of red: re-spread at your own pace, move it to today, or clear the dates. Clearing removes the dates only, and your videos stay saved
- A daily reminder that names the next video instead of saying “you have items due”, and stays quiet when the day is clear or already finished. It asks for notification permission only if you switch it on. On the Dashboard, a weekly report: what you finished, your streak, what's still planned — and one honest sentence about it, including when the week went badly
- A private note on every playlist, written on the playlist page itself, in one of five layouts you pick from previews in Settings: progress, a coverage map with a square per video so the gaps show, a session planner for the time you actually have, your recent notes, or a single compact line. Videos in the list that already have notes are badged, the way search results are
- The Playlists tab reads properly now: one title and one progress track to land on, counts in words instead of four emoji pills, and buttons that stay out of the way until you hover. A playlist whose name was never captured says “Untitled playlist” rather than showing you 34 characters of its id, and a course you have not started says so once instead of “0%” beside “0/45 videos”. Plan and Dashboard also joined the Notes menu beside your avatar
- Fixes: channel notes that had gone missing. The same channel could end up with two separate notes, depending on how you had opened it. Both are repaired for you on the next visit, and if both copies had text they are joined rather than one overwriting the other
v1.18.0 New A dashboard for everything you've kept, and progress on every video September 2026
- A Progress Dashboard, opened from the toolbar or from Notes. It answers what the extension never could: how long you've been sitting on each video, how far through it you got, how much you captured from it, and — oldest first — everything you saved and never started. It works signed out and offline
- Watch progress on every video, not just the ones inside a playlist. It's tracked for videos you kept on purpose — bookmarked, or with a note on them — and never for one you merely passed through, so this stays a notebook rather than a record of everything you watch
- Pick the language yourself, in Settings. Until now the extension took YouTube's language on a video page and your browser's everywhere else, with no way to say otherwise
- Pinned notes now open from the pin count on a video's card, in whichever of three styles you choose from previews in Settings — so the Pinned tab is gone. Notes History is now simply Notes, Courses is Playlists, and every video card reports its notes, pins and tags the same way the Channels tab does
- Fixes: a bookmark saved just after moving from one video to another took the previous video's title — the ones already saved are repaired for you; watch progress read “—” on every bookmark until something else redrew the list; and dropdowns in Settings opened white-on-white in dark mode
v1.17.3 New Notes beside your avatar, and a count of what's only local August 2026
- A Notes button in YouTube's header, right next to your avatar. It opens a menu shaped like YouTube's own — Videos, Pinned, Bookmarks, Courses, Channels and Sync — so any part of Notes History is one click away from any page, instead of hiding in a sidebar you have to open first
- Signed out, the icon counts what only this browser has. Your notes live here and nowhere else until you sign in, so the button carries that number on every page and the menu leads with the one action that fixes it. Sign in and the count disappears
- Chinese is complete. Simplified, Traditional and Hong Kong were missing everything behind bookmarks, folders and linked notes — that whole feature set was reading in English. Seventeen languages are now fully translated
- Fixes: the guided tour pointed at the Notes History entry in the sidebar, which on a video page is folded away inside a collapsed menu — so it often pointed at nothing
v1.17.2 New A guided tour, and bookmarks you can read down the page August 2026
- A guided tour that runs on the real thing. Six steps on a video page show where notes live, how to stamp the moment you're watching, and what tags, pins and bookmarks are each for; seven more walk through Notes History one view at a time. It opens the panels and switches the views as it goes, then puts everything back when you leave. Replay it whenever from Settings
- Bookmarks read as columns now — item, progress, folder, saved — so things line up down the list instead of floating wherever each title ended. Every row says when you saved it and how far through the video you got
- If you haven't signed in, the panel says what that costs. Notes live in this browser alone, and clearing site data takes them with it — so a strip at the top counts how many are at stake and offers one-click sign-in, and the reminder comes back as the pile grows instead of going quiet after the fifth note
- The update notice is a slim strip above the page instead of a box you had to dismiss to carry on
- Fixes: Save and Clear were invisible in YouTube's light theme, leaving the tour could leave the page blank, and a bookmarked video with no notes no longer collapses to half the height of its neighbours
v1.17.1 Improved The notes panel is organized by what each control acts on August 2026
- The notes panel is organized by what each control acts on. Everything that shapes the note you're writing is now one row under the text box — mode, timestamp, tags, then Clear and Save — and everything that acts on the whole video moved into a single More menu with headings, so Export is something you read instead of something you hunt for
- Bookmarking asks where it goes. Save a video, note or channel and the folder picker opens straight away, so it gets filed while you still know where it belongs instead of piling up in Uncategorized. Settings can turn the prompt off and send everything to Uncategorized to sort later
- The bookmark button has a row of its own with its folder beside it, so you can see at a glance whether this video is saved and where it went. And the note box folds to a single line while you're only reading — it keeps your draft, and says so
- Fixes: the More menu no longer gets cut off by the panel it lives in and opens upward when that is where the room is, the notes heading no longer wraps onto two lines, and the empty gap under the note box is gone
v1.17.0 New Bookmarks, folders, and notes that link to each other August 2026
- Bookmarks: one place for everything worth keeping. Tap the bookmark icon on a note, on the notes panel header to keep the whole video, or on a channel card, then browse all of it from a new Bookmarks tab in Notes History
- Folders for your bookmarks, up to five levels deep. A bookmark lives in exactly one folder, and choosing a folder shows everything underneath it, so a folder and a tag filter can narrow together
- Deleting a folder loses nothing: its sub-folders move up one level and its bookmarks become Uncategorized. And a video deleted on YouTube keeps its bookmark, marked Source unavailable with the title you saved
- Notes that link to each other: write [[Setup]] and it links to another note, a video, or a bookmarked channel. Nothing matches yet? The link goes dashed as a note to yourself, and writing a note that starts ## Setup makes every link to it work at once
- Backlinks: give a note a ## heading and it shows Linked from, listing every note that referenced it with its timestamp and source video, so a topic collects its own map across videos and months
v1.16.0 New Study-document exports, a Channels tab, and update notices August 2026
- Your exports now read like a study document — notes are split into titled topic sections, and starting a note with ## Setup makes it a heading of your own. The video's own chapters can title the sections too, and ## notes show as dividers inside the extension
- Courses stay together — opening a video or a note from Notes History → Courses now keeps you inside its playlist, so the notes you take next stay filed with the course instead of drifting into Ungrouped
- Sign Out asks first now, and tells you what happens: your notes stay on this device and only stop syncing — plus Open Notes History moved directly above it in the popup
- Notes History now has a Channels tab that shows your own activity per channel — videos, notes, pinned and tagged counts, with the matched videos one toggle away
- You now hear about it when the extension updates: the first YouTube page you open after an update shows a one-time card naming the new version, with a link to what changed — and Settings ▸ General can turn it off
v1.15.0 New Channel Notes move into Notes History, plus playlist progress August 2026
- Your Channel Notes now live in Notes History too — a dedicated Channels tab with Card and Grid views puts every channel you’ve noted one click away
- Playlist progress — see how far through a playlist you are in Notes History → Courses, with percent done, videos watched, time spent, and a tick or a partial ring on every video
- Sign in without leaving the video — the sync chip is now a one-tap Sign in to sync link, and the toolbar popup gained a cleaner identity card
v1.14.0 New A sync-status chip, and community notes become opt-in August 2026
- A sync-status chip in the notes panel shows at a glance whether your notes are backed up — Saved on this device, Syncing…, or Synced just now
- A first-run tip points new users straight to where notes live
- Export moved into a tidy ⋯ More menu, and community notes are now opt-in — turn them on in Settings → Display
- A quieter Orphaned Notes recovery card, plus a fix for opening Settings from a video page on Edge
v1.11.0 New Note version history, a length limit, and HTML study guides July 2026
- Keep the last 3 versions of any note as you edit — and delete a single version, or clear its history, in one click
- A 250-character limit with a live counter keeps notes short and easy to scan
- Pause at each note now shows a 5-second countdown on the video and resumes on its own — read without losing your place
- Export a whole course as a polished, self-contained HTML study guide — one section per video, with every timestamp linking back into the source
v1.10.0 New Anonymous usage stats, and nothing that identifies you July 2026
- Privacy-first, fully anonymous usage stats help us spot and fix rough edges faster — never your notes, the videos you watch, or anything that could identify you
v1.8.1 Fixed Notes stay in sync across browsers July 2026
- Your notes now stay in sync across browsers — if a sync fails, your devices no longer end up showing different numbers of notes
v1.8.0 Improved Sync shows a live breakdown, and one click syncs everything July 2026
- Sync now shows a live breakdown — Notes, Pins, Courses, Tags, and more, ticking off as they go
- One click now syncs everything, not just your notes
v1.7.0 New Channel Notes, and more that follows you across devices July 2026
- Channel Notes — a private note per channel, synced to your account
- More that syncs across devices — video titles, Notes History density, and hidden community notes
v1.6.1 Improved Notes History opens reliably on the YouTube home page July 2026
- Notes History now opens reliably on the YouTube home page and closes when you head Home
- Steadier cross-browser sync, plus tidier Timeline density options
v1.6.0 New Courses, and a cleaner Notes History July 2026
- Courses — group a playlist's notes and copy or export them together
- Cleaner Notes History — segmented views, a Tags menu, and density options
v1.5.0 New Note tags, and badges on search results that already have notes July 2026
- See which search results already have notes
- Note tags — organize and filter, synced to your account
v1.3.0 Improved Community notes, public profiles, and automatic sync July 2026
- Community notes, public profiles & pinned notes
- Automatic cross-browser sync
v1.0.0 Launch First public release July 2026
- First public release
- Timestamped notes on any YouTube video, synced to the cloud
Turn watching into learning
Install YouTube Notes and never lose a great idea again.
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