YouTube to flashcards with timestamp jump-back
AI pulls 10 exam-ready Q&A cards from any video transcript. Every card links to the exact second the answer is grounded in. Verify in 3 seconds instead of re-watching.
Watch YouTube. Walk away with flashcards.
Turn any lecture into 10 exam-ready Anki cards in 20 seconds. Timestamp jump-back, one-click Anki export, and a channel radar for creators. Free tier — no credit card.
Features
Summarize any YouTube video into timestamped notes, exam-ready flashcards, and AI study plans. One-click export to Anki.
One-click Anki export
Standard tab-separated CSV — drag into Anki, done. No plugins, no workarounds. Obsidian Markdown and Notion sync too.
Playlist to course
Paste any YouTube playlist URL. AI groups videos into chapters, sets due dates, builds a full syllabus. Works for 20-video USMLE blocks and 50-video Karpathy playlists.
Channel Radar for creators
Track any YouTube channel. Outlier alerts when an upload beats that channel's 48-hour baseline. Title and thumbnail change history. vidIQ and 1of10 alternative inside your watch flow.
Deck sharing (import with one tap)
Publish any deck as a shareable link. Classmates open it, import cards with one tap. The AnKing-style viral loop for your own lectures.
Daily Resurface + weekly recap
Yesterday's highlights come back as today's review cards. Weekly AI recap summarizes everything you learned across videos and notes.
Ask your watch history
"What did that cardiologist say about ejection fraction?" Natural-language search across every video you've noted.
Timestamped notes with Quill rich editor
Take rich notes anchored to the exact second. Search later by any word spoken in the video.
Private by default
Summaries and flashcards generated server-side and cached. Your notes are private unless you explicitly publish a deck or a permalink.
How it works
Paste any YouTube URL
Works with any video that has captions — auto-generated is fine. Boards and Beyond, Sketchy, Pathoma, Karpathy, Quimbee, Dreaming Spanish.
Tap Flashcards tab
Inside the player, right next to Notes and Transcript. Tap Generate. Cards appear in about 20 seconds with timestamps.
Save + export to Anki
Tap bookmark on cards you want. Export deck as Anki CSV. Import in Anki, review with AnKing schedule.
Resurface tomorrow
Yesterday's highlights come back as today's review queue. Spaced repetition without thinking about it.
Perfect for you
NoteTube AI is the ideal youtube video summarizer app for anyone who wants a fast, reliable tool on Android.
Free YouTube video summarizer: paste any video → a timestamped summary and 10 exam-ready flashcards in 20 seconds, every line linked to the exact second it came from. Export to Anki CSV, Obsidian, or Notion. No credit card.
Whether you need it for work, travel, or daily use, NoteTube AI delivers a simple experience with no clutter.
What NoteTube AI is
NoteTube AI is a free YouTube video summarizer for people who study from YouTube. Paste a lecture, podcast or video essay and in about 20 seconds you get a timestamped summary of it plus 10 question-and-answer flashcards pulled from the transcript. It runs on iPhone and Android, and the free tier gives you unlimited summaries with no ads.
The name comes up in two places: the app itself, and the decks people share out of it. If you arrived here from a shared deck link, the app is what opens it — the sharer sent you a read-only preview and a one-tap import into your own library.
Why a timestamp is the whole point
Most YouTube summarizers hand you a paragraph and expect you to trust it. That is fine for deciding whether a video is worth watching, and useless for a two-hour lecture you are going to be examined on — because the moment you doubt one line, your only option is to scrub back through the video and find it.
Every line NoteTube writes carries the second it came from. Each flashcard has a timestamp pill; tap it and the player jumps to that exact second while the transcript highlights the line the card was built from. Checking a card takes about three seconds instead of a re-watch. Card generation is capped to facts that are actually present in the transcript rather than inferred around it, and anything that still looks wrong is one tap to edit or delete before it leaves the app.
When a video has no captions, you get a plain “no captions” state rather than a guess. YouTube’s own captions — manual or auto-generated — cover most educational content, and audio transcription is on the roadmap rather than pretending to work today.
Summarizing is one feature; remembering is the product
A summary you read once and close has not moved anything into your memory. The rest of the app exists to close that gap.
- Export anywhere. Anki as standard tab-separated CSV with front, back and tags columns — File → Import and you are done, no plugins. Markdown for Obsidian. Notion sync on Premium.
- Playlist to course. Paste a public playlist link and the videos are grouped into chapters with due dates, so a pharmacology block becomes an eight-week syllabus with a finish line.
- Daily Resurface. Yesterday’s highlights come back as today’s review cards, so spaced repetition happens without you scheduling it. A weekly recap says what you covered in plain language.
- Ask your watch history. Search across every video you have taken notes on, by what was said in it rather than by title.
- Share a deck. Any deck becomes a short link. A classmate opens it, previews the cards and imports them with fresh review schedules of their own.
If you want the long version of how transcript-to-card generation works, we wrote it up in how AI turns YouTube lectures into Anki cards, and there is a step-by-step walkthrough for turning Boards and Beyond lectures into an Anki deck.
The creator side: channel radar
The same transcript pipeline runs a research view for people who make videos rather than study them. Track a channel and its uploads are polled every 15 minutes through the YouTube Data API. When a new video crosses twice that channel’s own 48-hour baseline views, it is flagged in the Radar feed and pushed to you — an outlier measured against the channel itself, not against some global average that says nothing about a small channel. Title and thumbnail changes are logged over time, so a competitor’s A/B tests are visible as history rather than guesswork. Three tracked channels are free; Premium raises it to 50.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I turn a YouTube video into flashcards?
- Open NoteTube AI, paste any YouTube link (or open it via the share sheet), tap the Flashcards tab inside the player, then tap Generate. In about 20 seconds you get 10 exam-ready Q&A cards pulled from the transcript. Each card has a timestamp pill — tap it to jump the player back to the exact second. Save the cards you want, skip the rest, export to Anki CSV or Markdown with one tap.
- Does this work with Boards and Beyond?
- Yes. Boards and Beyond publishes on YouTube and captions are available, so NoteTube can generate flashcards from any BnB lecture. Students use NoteTube alongside AnKing — AnKing covers the canonical Step 1 content, and NoteTube captures the micro-facts and mnemonics Dr. Ryan drops in specific videos that pre-made decks do not have.
- Can I export to Anki?
- Yes. Standard tab-separated CSV with front, back, and tags columns. Open Anki, File → Import, select the CSV, choose your deck, done. No plugins, no workarounds. Tags include "notetube" plus a slug of the video title so you can filter later.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free forever tier. You get unlimited AI summaries, 5 flashcard decks per week, 1 playlist-to-course per week, and 3 tracked channels in Radar. Premium ($9.99/mo or $79/yr) unlocks 100 decks per week, 20 courses, 50 tracked channels, Notion sync, and priority AI. No ads, no dark patterns.
- What about videos without captions?
- We show a clear "no captions" state instead of guessing. Audio transcription is on the roadmap for Premium — right now we rely on YouTube's own captions (manual or auto-generated), which cover most educational content.
- How is this different from Eightify or NoteGPT?
- Eightify and NoteGPT are great at instant summaries. NoteTube goes further: flashcards with timestamp jump-back, one-click Anki export, playlist-to-course with due dates, daily spaced-repetition review, deck sharing with classmates, and a creator radar for outlier detection. The difference is captured by the phrase "watching to retained knowledge." Summary is one feature; memory is the product.
- Can I use it for medical school (USMLE Step 1 / Step 2)?
- Yes — the product is especially built for med school workflow. Works with Boards and Beyond, Sketchy, Pathoma, Dirty Medicine, Ninja Nerd, Randy Neil EKG. Anki CSV export is first-class. Deck sharing lets you drop a class-wide link in GroupMe. Spaced repetition mirrors Anki's scheduling so cards integrate cleanly alongside AnKing or Lightyear.
- Can I use it for YouTube creator research?
- Yes. Track any channel and we poll its uploads every 15 minutes via the YouTube Data API. When a new video crosses 2× that channel's own 48-hour baseline views, you get a push notification and the video is flagged in the Radar feed. Title and thumbnail changes are logged over time so you can see A/B tests. Half the 1of10 feature set at a third the price.
- Can I share decks with classmates?
- Yes. Tap share on any deck → you get a short link like notetube.ai/d/abc123. Drop it in a class GroupMe or Discord. When a classmate taps the link, NoteTube opens (or prompts install), shows a preview of the deck, and imports the cards with one tap into their own library with fresh review schedules. The original author can't see who imported — deck sharing is private on the receiver side.
- Does it work on iPhone and Android?
- Yes — both platforms from launch. Flutter codebase so features ship at parity on both.
- What happens to my notes if you shut down?
- You own your notes. Every note and flashcard can be exported at any time to Markdown (Obsidian), Anki CSV, or Notion. Our permalink pages and deck-share links are read-only backups you can share or archive.
- Is there a creator tier?
- Day-1 we ship Free + Premium ($9.99/mo). A dedicated Creator tier with higher Radar limits and competitor benchmarking is on the roadmap for v1.2 once we see real creator usage patterns.
- How accurate are the AI flashcards?
- Every card includes a timestamp anchor so you can verify the card against the actual moment in the video in under 3 seconds. We also cap card generation to facts directly present in the transcript — no hallucinated examples. If a card looks off, you edit or delete it with one tap before exporting.