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Roxy Lee
Roxy Lee

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Tried Everything to Turn YouTube Lectures into Notes — Ended Up Building My Own Tool

Explore here:https://y2doc.com/

I watch a lot of technical content on YouTube—talks, deep dives, interviews. But once the video goes beyond surface-level, it becomes a nightmare to keep up. I was constantly pausingtrying to take notes, and honestly spending more time fighting the player than actually learning.

I tried all the popular tools—most of them just extract the transcript or spit out a generic summary. That’s not super helpful when you want to revisit key points, follow the structure of the talk, or study deeply. And if I just wanted subtitles, YouTube already has that built in.

So I built y2doc: paste any YouTube link (up to 4h long) and it’ll generate a full document with structured headings, timestamps, and the actual content—sometimes over 10k words. You can also choose different output styles (summary, conversation format, even email-style writeups).

It’s totally free to use. I made it mostly for myself and other people who prefer reading/reviewing over rewatching videos, but still rely on video content to learn.

Would love any feedback, feature requests, or edge cases you'd want it to handle. Try it here: https://y2doc.com/

Top comments (1)

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zhiyu_lin_e1da63c637936a9 profile image
Vesper Lee

Love how simple and effective this is! Perfect for turning lectures, interviews, or tutorials into searchable documents. Highly recommend!