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



This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Roxy Lee

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/


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Roxy Lee