You'll only see a fraction of the billions of videos on YouTube in your lifetime, and that's probably for the best. There are some videos where you just want the key points and you have to sit and listen to a lot of crap to get it. That's a waste of time. What if you could shorten your viewing time by summarizing key messages from the videos you watch? Fortunately, Google's AI chatbot Gemini has a built-in YouTube extension and is enabled by default.
Enable the YouTube extension in Gemini on desktop and mobile devices
By default, all available extensions are enabled in Gemini. But if you need to check, you should do so on desktop and Android or iOS phones.
On your desktop, open Gemini in your browser. Make sure you're signed in with the Google Account you want to use. Then, click Settings on the left sidebar and select Extensions in the menu. If YouTube's switch is not blue, toggle it.
On your phone, open the Gemini app (Android only) or open Gemini in the Google app (iOS). You can also access it via a mobile browser. Click on your profile photo and select the extension to open the list. If YouTube is disabled, use the toggle to enable YouTube.
How to summarize YouTube videos using Gemini
Open the video you want to watch and summarize it. Copy its URL from the address bar if you're on desktop or from the Share menu if you're on mobile.
Paste the link into Gemini, then use a natural language prompt such as "Summary this video" or "Give me a quick summary."
As this screenshot shows, it does the exact job of the video I just watched:
Note: Gemini summarizes YouTube videos using text automatically generated by YouTube (such as subtitles and transcripts). If the video doesn't have them, it won't be able to extract anything from it. Additionally, summarization is not supported for YouTube videos in all languages: it is only available in English, Japanese, and Korean.
This summary feature is especially handy if you need to extract key details from the video (for example, the price of the product being reviewed or a price comparison).
Tip: I often use this to generate bullet points and check whether a long YouTube video is worth watching, especially if the description and comments don't make any recommendations.
Use Gemini + YouTube as a learning partner
You can ask Gemini to recommend some videos related to a topic of your choice. Then, in a follow-up, you can ask Gemini to summarize a specific video - or all videos.
The pairing of Gemini and YouTube is perfect for well-structured, informative videos. This approach allows you to quickly learn about a topic before delving deeper into it. With the right prompts, you can Q&A with Gemini about the videos and create your own "Sparknotes" to learn from a wide range of videos.
Tell Gemini what format you want the information to be in
When a YouTube video compares two items (for example, which laptop to buy), it's visually helpful to ask Gemini to dress the information up in a nice table. You can also ask Gemini to show off their strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes the AI will do this without any additional prompting.
