YT? YouTube?
Taking notes while watching a YouTube video can be a bit annoying. I wanted a better way and I wanted it permissively licensed and free with no logins or tracking.
So I built it…
Introducing YTNT
YT NoteTaker makes it easy to take notes while playing a YouTube video.
First, click this link (on your PC or Mac, it doesn’t work on mobile):
Go to YTNT
and you’ll see this:
Paste a YouTube URL into the text box and click Load Video:
And you’ll see the above. Now, how to work this thing?
First, click on that text area. You can start typing your notes, using the keyboard shortcuts (non-macOS users, use ALT instead of ⌥) to control the video without breaking the flow of typing. When you’re done, export your notes to a Word doc.
So that’s the basic use-case. Here’s something that’s a bit more fun for the Google Chrome users.. If you click “Request Microphone Permission”, allow it in your browser and enable “Speech-to-Text”:
Your browser tab is actively listening and converting any speech it hears into text. You’ll have to turn the video volume up if you want YTNT to transcribe speech from the video you are playing. To send a transcript clip into your notes, just use the keyboard shortcut.
You can also pause the video and dictate notes (as I unsuccessfully tried to do here):
“passable”
So, why did I build this?
YTNT was built to solve a problem for my SO, because she takes notes while watching YT. Also, with Cascada and BS2CSV taking the closed-source / commercial route, I wanted to build something small, libre and free.
My Thoughts
YTNT is definitely a WIP / pre-alpha product. It can be useful right now but it has some large functionality gaps. Like, if you close the tab, goodbye notes! Being able to save and load notes is the main feature that needs to be added. For now, the only way to save is to export a Word .doc. The Speech-to-Text feature also needs to be more accurate and I’m not happy about the Chrome requirement. Would be great if I could use it on Firefox and not have Google’s servers perform the transcription.
The Future
I want to dig deeper into speech to text locally in the browser and see how that feature can be made browser-agnostic or at least support Firefox. Also, there are a BUNCH of CSS bugs to fix 😃. If you want to report a bug or request a feature, create an issue on GitHub.
If you have any questions/would like to share your experience, leave a reply below. To receive an email when I publish a post, subscribe here.
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