tLDw - One Click YT Summaries — paco

tLDw is a lightweight browser extension that summarizes YouTube videos so you don't have to watch the whole thing. It reads the video transcript and uses AI to give you a concise summary with timestamps. Great for podcasts, long-form content, and clickbait.

Setup
To keep this extension free, you use your own Gemini API key (also free).

Follow these steps:
1. Go to Google AI Studio
2. Sign in with your Google account
3. Click "Create API Key"
4. Copy the key and paste it into the text field

Speed & How It Works
tLDw works by reading the video transcript and sending it to Gemini for summarization. Speed depends on where you click:

On the video page: ~10 seconds. The transcript is scraped directly from the page. This is the fastest method.

From the homepage or sidebar: ~20 seconds. tLDw must briefly open the video in a background tab to extract the transcript. You'll see the tab flash twice — this is required because YouTube only renders transcript data when a tab has focus. This is the fastest approach possible while keeping the tool free and privacy-respecting.

For comparison, YouTube's built-in Gemini "Ask" feature takes about 8 seconds but requires two clicks and a scroll. tLDw trades a few extra seconds for a single-click experience.

Speed is constrained by YouTube's transcript rendering requirements and Gemini's free-tier API response times. The elapsed timer on the loading bar shows real-time progress so you always know where things stand.

tldw = too lazy, didnt watch