By now, if you're trying to run away from adopting AI into your daily workflow and routine, you're fighting a losing battle. I gave up on doing that a long, long time ago, and I've been testing AI tools left and right, trying to find ones that actually make my life easier.
Some, like NotebookLM and Perplexity, manage to do exactly that, while others just end up overpromising and underdelivering. One tool I've been hearing quite a bit about lately is Gistr, which is an AI-native notebook. Of course, I couldn't resist giving it a spin to see if it actually delivers, and it might just be the perfect AI note-taking app to save YouTube videos, web pages, and PDFs. The best part? It's completely free.
Gistr makes watching and annotating YouTube videos a breeze
Save hours by letting Gistr do the watching for you
Gistr is a fairly new AI tool designed primarily to help people who use YouTube for learning and research purposes. If you've ever done that before, you know how tiring it can get watching hour-long lectures and interviews. What's worse is that watching an hour-long video rarely only takes an hour.
You'll often spend even more time pausing, rewinding, and trying to take meaningful notes. Sometimes, you even end up losing track of what you actually wanted to learn in the first place. With Gistr, you can "watch" videos without actually needing to watch the entire thing. When you head to Gistr, you'll see an option to upload your YouTube video URL.
Once you do, the AI tool will attempt to fetch it, and once it does, a Gist Away button will appear. All you need to do is click it, and you'll be redirected to a new 'thread' with the video on one side and a chat interface on the other. The chat interface is divided into three sections: Notes, Sources, and Moments. I personally found the Moments section really useful. Just click a button and Gistr will automatically highlight the key parts of the video, letting you jump directly to the most important moments without wasting time.
The best part is that you can click on a "moment," and the video playback will jump straight to that exact point. When you switch to the Notes section, you can ask any questions you have about the video, request an in-depth summary, or even get explanations for specific parts.
You don't need to worry about Gistr making things up
Reliable insights, word for word
One of the biggest drawbacks of using AI tools is just how much inaccurate or made-up information they tend to produce. NotebookLM is one of the only tools I've found that doesn't struggle with this problem since it's source-grounded. This means NotebookLM only references information you feed it via sources or conversation.
Luckily, Gistr is built on a similar system, meaning any responses you get from the AI will strictly be about the video(s) you uploaded. Despite an AI tool's source-grounded nature, blindly trusting its output is rarely a good idea. With NotebookLM, you get citations next to each claim, and hovering over them shows you exactly where it picked the information up from.
Gistr does something similar but tailored to video. Instead of citations, it displays video timestamps alongside each answer, so you can click and instantly verify the context for yourself. When you ask Gistr something that isn't mentioned in the sources you uploaded, it'll simply tell you it doesn't know. For instance, I uploaded an interview and asked Gistr to tell me what XDA is (which was completely unrelated to the video). Here's the response I got:
The term "XDA" is not mentioned or defined within the provided context. Therefore, I am unable to provide information about what XDA is based on the current data.
Would you like to explore other topics related to the provided context, such as the future of AI companions or the challenges of building AI products?
A transcription of the YouTube video is also created for you
Get the full transcript alongside your notes
Gistr is far from the first tool I tried to make watching YouTube videos a bit quicker and more efficient. Recently, I used NotebookLM to watch YouTube videos, and I was really impressed. It's been my go-to way of watching videos since then, but I've had one major complaint: NotebookLM doesn't display a transcription of the video the way Gistr does.
Though NotebookLM does use the transcription to generate summaries and let you ask questions, it isn't as interactive as Gistr's version. To access the transcript in NotebookLM, you need to click the YouTube video in the Sources panel, where it's displayed at the bottom.
With Gistr, the transcription is shown right next to the Chat panel, and it's interactive. This means if you click on a sentence or a specific line of text, the video will instantly jump to that exact moment. It's a small detail, but it makes a big difference when you're trying to revisit key sections, fact-check something, or quickly skim without rewatching the entire video.
NotebookLM's approach feels more hidden and less intuitive, while Gistr puts the transcript front and center, making it feel like a core part of the experience rather than a buried feature. Gistr also automatically divides the video into Chapters, which can make long videos feel a lot less overwhelming.
Working with PDFs has never been this easy
Might beat NotebookLM too
All my points above pretty much apply to PDFs as well, not just YouTube videos. Instead of uploading YouTube URLs, you can upload PDF documents and even webpages.
What I really liked about uploading PDFs to Gistr is that the file appears on one side, so you can read through the actual content while asking the AI questions.
You can also highlight content in the PDF viewer and directly turn those highlights into questions, which makes the whole process feel much more interactive and less like you're just pasting text into a chat box.
You need to try out Gistr ASAP
. If you're looking for an AI tool that makes working with PDFs and YouTube videos way easier, Gistr is honestly the only one you need.
