Lots of YouTube videos are unnecessarily long. This becomes a real problem when you’re looking to get some information quickly, but are forced to watch the entire video for it.

Luckily, it’s possible to generate short, to-the-point summaries of lengthy videos on YouTube. So, whether you need to summarize videos for work or personal usage, here are the eight AI-powered Chrome extensions to summarize YouTube videos.

1. Glarity

Glarity is an open-source Chrome extension that uses ChatGPT to summarize search results and YouTube videos. The extension works automatically and starts generating a summary as soon as the video begins, displaying it on the right side of the video.

Perhaps, the best thing about Glarity is that you can customize the prompt it sends to ChatGPT. Though there are some example prompts provided by Glarity, you can learn to write effective ChatGPT prompts to get better summaries.

To use Glarity, you must have a ChatGPT account. There’s an option to add OpenAI’s API key as well.

If you want to use Glarity only for summarizing YouTube videos, you can turn off all the other websites from the extension settings. And if you don’t want summaries for every YouTube video you watch, there’s an option to shift to manual mode. By doing so, summaries will only be generated when you click the button.

Download: Glarity (Free)

2. YouTube Summary With ChatGPT

YouTube Summary With ChatGPT does exactly what it says on the tin. In addition to summaries of videos, it also shows a transcript in case you don’t want important information to be left out.

After downloading this extension, you’ll see a “Transcript & Summary” box on the top right of the YouTube video page. Clicking it generates a transcript. To create a summary, click on OpenAI’s logo, and the extension will open ChatGPT in a new tab, where you can view the summary.

Like Glarity, it lets you customize the prompt. This extension, too, is free. But the only downside is that it redirects you to the ChatGPT website instead of showing the summary on the same tab.

Download: YouTube Summary With ChatGPT (Free)

3. Eightify

Eightify is another GPT-powered Chrome extension for summarizing YouTube videos. After installing this extension, you’ll see a Summarize button beside the Like button. Clicking on it creates a summary that you can view on the right side of the screen.

Called Eightify, this extension provides an eight-point summary of any YouTube video. This short, easy-to-digest summary helps you understand the entire video. You can also expand any of the eight points if you need more details. Best of all, you can generate summaries in different languages.

Eightify’s free plan offers five free summaries on installation and three more each week. In addition to this restriction, you can only summarize a YouTube video for free if it has over 30,000 views and is less than 60 minutes long.

If you want to summarize a video that doesn’t meet these criteria, you’ll have to upgrade to Eightify Pro.

Download: Eightify (Free, subscription available)

4. Upword

Upword is a powerful tool for AI note-taking and summarization that helps you on all websites, not just YouTube. Though it summarizes the videos, these summaries are not as short compared to what other tools provide.

For instance, it provided a 485-word summary of an 11-minute YouTube video, cutting it by 77%. Although this ensures that important points don’t get lost, you’ll have to spend greater time reading summaries. Besides the summary, it also displays a time-stamped transcript on the right side. You can use these timestamps to jump to any part of the video.

If you need advanced features like personalization or sharing notes, you’ll have to subscribe to its paid plan, which costs $15 per month. But there’s a free seven-day trial available.

Download: Upword (Free, subscription available)

5. ChatGPT - Summarize everything!

ChatGPT - Summarize everything! is another simple extension for summarizing YouTube videos. By default, the tool uses ChatGPT to provide a short summary paragraph followed by seven points.

However, you can change this format by rewriting the prompt from the extension settings. There’s an option for adding placeholders for the title, URL, and language in the prompt.

This extension can summarize articles and other text besides YouTube videos. Next to the Summary tab, there’s a tab for Chat, from where you can directly use ChatGPT. In case you don’t find any summary useful, you can ask the extension to regenerate it.

This extension too works in different languages. Like Glarity, it also lets you add an OpenAI API key.

Download: ChatGPT - Summarize everything! (Free)

6. YouTubeDigest

YouTubeDigest can create summaries for YouTube videos in different forms. By default, it provides a summary in five bullet points. However, you can change settings to get summaries as titled sections, single paragraphs, or articles.

If you’ve chosen bullet points or sections, there’s an option to specify the number of points/sections as well. Besides the option for changing language, you can export the summary as a PDF or Doc file.

Since it provides a time-stamped summary, you can jump to any important part. Best of all, YouTubeDigest has a text-to-speech feature, so won’t necessarily have to read the generated summaries.

Download: YouTubeDigest (Free)

7. VidSummize

VidSummize is a GPT-powered extension that can generate easy-to-digest summaries of YouTube videos. Since it divides the summary into chapters and uses bullet points, you can easily go through the summary, reading the essential parts only.

Though installing the extension makes it much easier to summarize YouTube videos, you can also use its website to get summaries by pasting links to YouTube videos. There’s an option to pick the language model and customize the prompts to get results tailored to your use case. Currently, the tool supports 17 languages.

However, to use VidSummize, you must add the OpenAI API key, which you can create from OpenAI’s API Keys page. The best part about VidSummize is that besides its browser extension, the tool is available as a mobile app for both Android and iOS.

Download: VidSummize (Free)

8. Rio

Being a digital assistant, Rio offers much more than just summaries of YouTube videos. It works seamlessly with Gmail, Outlook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, and, of course, YouTube, helping you write and read more efficiently.

On any YouTube page, Rio will display a summary box on the right side, asking you whether you need a summary in the form of bullet points, an article, or a short paragraph. Like VidSummize, it offers a text-to-speech feature. Rio shows timestamps with bullet point summaries, but they are not clickable.

Like almost all others on the list, Rio is also powered by ChatGPT. So, you can find your summaries in the ChatGPT conversation history. If you use ChatGPT for other practical purposes, like research or writing, this extension can help you a lot.

Download: Rio (Free)

Use AI-Powered Browser Extensions

Browser extensions have always been a handy tool, helping you speed up your workflow. But with the improvements in AI, these add-ons have become surprisingly powerful, functioning as your personal assistants. Just remember not to rely on AI entirely, as it's not always completely reliable.

The extensions mentioned above save you the hassle of watching the entire videos by generating a concise summary for you to check. But there are several other ways you can use AI to help you with your daily browsing.