How to Take Notes From a YouTube Video

Get the transcript first, then write your notes from the text and not from the playback. Text with timestamps lets you skim an hour of video in a few minutes and jump back only to the parts worth watching.

Below are three ways to do it: by hand, with an AI assistant, and with a tool that returns the notes for you. They all start from the same thing.

Start from the transcript

On YouTube, open the description under the video and choose Show transcript. YouTube shows a transcript for any video that has captions. The lines scroll with the video, and a click on a line jumps the player to that moment. How to open the transcript on YouTube has the steps for a computer and a phone.

Two things to know before you rely on it:

• Many transcripts come from automatic captions. YouTube says these are made by machine learning and that their quality may vary. Names, numbers and technical terms are the usual mistakes.
• Some videos have no captions, so there is no transcript to open. The guide to a transcript with no captions covers that case.

Way 1: by hand

This costs nothing and works well for a video under half an hour.

1. Open the transcript next to the video.
2. Read the description first. Creators often put a chapter list there, and it is a ready outline for your notes.
3. Skim the transcript at reading speed. When a line matters, note it with its time.
4. Watch only the moments you marked. Text is quick to skim, and a demo or a diagram is quicker to understand by watching.

Copying from the YouTube panel is clumsy on a long video. If you want the whole text in one piece, YouTube transcript returns it with timestamps, ready to copy or download.

Way 2: with an AI assistant

An assistant is good at turning a long transcript into an outline. It needs the text, though. A pasted link is not enough for ChatGPT or Claude, as this guide explains.

1. Copy the transcript with its timestamps.
2. Paste it and say what it is and what you want. For example: "This is a transcript with timestamps. Write study notes: a three sentence summary, then the main points in order, each with its timestamp. Quote the line each point relies on."
3. Check two or three of the quoted lines against the video.

Ask for the quotes on purpose. A summary with no quotes is hard to check, and an assistant can state something the speaker never said. A quoted line with a time takes ten seconds to verify.

Way 3: with a tool that returns the notes

We make Scribiz, so this is our own tool. The YouTube video summarizer takes a link and returns a short summary, the key points, chapters and quotes. Each one is tied to a time in the video, and a click on the time jumps the player there.

What it does differently from the first two ways:

• It uses the captions when they are good and listens to the audio when a video has none. The result says which one it used.
• Every key point and chapter is matched to a segment of the transcript, so the time is where the words were said.
• With Words and screen, slide titles and other text on screen become part of what is summarized. That matters for lectures, product demos and tutorials.
• The result exports as Markdown or plain text, which reads well in a notes app.

A model still writes the summary, so it can leave things out. Open the times for the points that matter to you.

Without an account it takes videos up to 15 minutes, with 10 Listen or Watch minutes and 30 caption lookups a day. A free account takes videos up to 2 hours and has 30 minutes a month. Minutes and billing says how each kind of run is counted.

What a transcript leaves out

A transcript holds the words only. A slide, a chart, a formula on a whiteboard or code in an editor is in your notes only if someone read it aloud.

For a video where the screen carries the content, either watch those parts yourself or read the screen too. Video OCR returns the text shown in a video, scene by scene, with a time for each scene.

A layout for the notes

Whichever way you choose, the same layout keeps notes useful a month later:

Title, channel, link, date watchedSummaryThree sentences: what it is about and what it concludes.Chapters00:00 Why budgets fail01:35 Track before you cut10:12 Choose one categoryKey points- [01:35] Track every expense for a month before you change anything.- [10:12] Cut the one category that surprised you most.Quotes- [23:00] "Automate savings on payday so the decision is made once."On screen- [10:40] Slide: the three categories people underestimate.Open questions- What I did not follow, and what to look up next.

Keep the times. They are what lets you check a point later, and they turn a line in your notes into a link back to the moment in the video.

Sources

Checked on 5 October 2026.

• View video transcripts, YouTube Help
• Use automatic captioning, YouTube Help