How It Works
Learn how sum.video turns any YouTube video into a quick, accurate summary—securely, transparently, and without accessing your personal data.
You can use sum.video without installing anything.
Just copy a YouTube link and paste it into the search bar on our homepage. We automatically detect the video, fetch its public transcript, and prepare it for summarization.
You can paste a URL without an account. The Chrome extension asks you to sign in with Google so we can keep your weekly quota. We use Google only for sign-in, never to read your YouTube account or watch history.
For even faster access, you can generate a summary by placing sum.video/ in front of the YouTube URL while watching a video.
Example:
sum.video/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12345
This simply redirects you to our site with the video already loaded. It does not modify YouTube, install anything, or access your YouTube account.
Once we have the public transcript, our AI processes it in real time.
The system identifies key topics, insights, and takeaways, then generates a clear, structured summary in just a few seconds. The process happens on our secure servers—fast, private, and reliable.
Receive your summary in clean, easy-to-read formats:
- Bullet points
- Narrative-style summaries
- Key insights
- Multi-language support
- Audio summaries (for listening on the go)
Premium members get unlimited summaries and access to all supported languages.
If you prefer a one-click experience, you can install our official Chrome extension.
What the extension does:
- Adds a "Summarize" button directly on YouTube
- Detects the video you are watching
- Retrieves its public transcript
- Generates a summary in your preferred language
What the extension does NOT do:
- Does not read your YouTube watch history or Google data beyond sign-in
- Does not read your browsing history
- Does not collect personal data
- Does not modify pages beyond adding the summary button
Permissions used:
- activeTab — detect the current YouTube video
- scripting — display the summary UI
- storage — save your language and settings
The extension is fully optional—everything works on the website without it.
We take privacy and security seriously.
- End-to-end encrypted transfers
- No data sharing with third parties
- Secure, compliant infrastructure
- GDPR compliant
- Google is used only for sign-in, not YouTube data
Your video URLs, summaries, and preferences stay private and under your control.