Answers to common questions about using Notch for video note-taking.
Notch uses Google Sign-In for authentication. Visit the app and click the "Sign in with Google" button. You will be redirected to Google's authentication page where you can select your Google account. Once authenticated, you are signed in and ready to start taking notes. There is no separate registration form, no password to remember, and no email verification step. Your Notch account is tied to your Google account.
There are three ways to add a video to Notch:
While a video is playing (or paused), click the timestamp button in the note input area. This captures the current playback position and attaches it to your note. Type your note content and press Enter or click the save button. The note appears in your note list with the timestamp displayed. Click any timestamp to seek the video to that exact moment. You can also use keyboard shortcuts: press the shortcut key while typing to insert the current timestamp without reaching for the mouse.
Notch uses Google's Gemini AI to transcribe video audio into text. When you click the "Transcribe" button, the system uploads the video's audio to Gemini's File API, waits for it to be processed, and then generates a timestamped transcript. The transcript appears in a dedicated panel where you can scroll through it, search within it, and click any segment to jump to that point in the video. Transcription uses tokens from your AI budget — the number of tokens consumed depends on the length and complexity of the video's audio.
For YouTube videos that already have closed captions, Notch can use those existing captions instead of running AI transcription. This is faster and does not consume any tokens from your budget. If captions are available, you will see an option to use them before initiating AI transcription.
Once a transcript is available for a video (either from AI transcription or YouTube captions), you can generate AI notes. Click the "Generate Notes" button and Notch will analyze the transcript, divide it into logical segments, and produce structured notes for each segment. Each generated note includes a topic heading, key points, and timestamps linking back to the relevant parts of the video. The notes appear in your note panel alongside any manual notes you have taken. Generated notes are marked with an "AI" label so you can distinguish them from your own writing. You can edit, delete, or reorganize generated notes just like any other note.
AI tokens are the unit of measurement for your AI feature usage. Tokens roughly correspond to the amount of text processed — both the input (your video's audio or transcript) and the output (the generated transcript or notes). The free tier provides 500,000 tokens, which is enough for transcribing and generating notes for dozens of typical-length videos. This budget never expires and never resets, so you can use it at your own pace. The Pro tier provides 10 million tokens per month, resetting at the start of each billing cycle. You can check your current usage in the account section of the app, where a progress bar shows how much of your budget you have used.
Notebooks are collections of related videos. To create a notebook, click the "New Notebook" button in the sidebar or notebook section. Give it a descriptive name — for example, "Biology 201 Lectures" or "Q4 Planning Meetings." Once created, you can assign videos to a notebook from the video's settings or by dragging it into the notebook in the sidebar. When you open a notebook, you see only the videos assigned to it, along with aggregate note counts. This is especially useful when you have many videos and want to focus on a particular topic or project.
The search feature in Notch scans across all of your notes, transcripts, and video titles. Open the search overlay (click the search icon or use the keyboard shortcut) and start typing. Results appear as you type, grouped by video. Each result shows a text snippet with the matching terms highlighted and the associated timestamp. Click a result to open that video and jump to the matching moment. Search is particularly effective when you have AI transcripts, because even content you did not manually note becomes searchable. For example, if a professor mentions a specific term during a lecture and you did not write it down, the transcript ensures you can still find it later.
You can upgrade to Pro from the account section of the app. Click "Upgrade to Pro" and you will be taken to a Stripe checkout page where you can enter your payment information. The Pro subscription is billed monthly and can be cancelled at any time through the Stripe customer portal, which is accessible from your account settings. When you cancel, you retain Pro access until the end of your current billing period, then revert to the free tier. Your notes, transcripts, and videos are never deleted when you downgrade — you simply lose access to the higher AI token budget.
Yes. Notch uses Firebase for authentication and data storage. All data is transmitted over HTTPS and stored in Google's cloud infrastructure. Your notes and transcripts are scoped to your account and cannot be accessed by other users. Uploaded videos are stored in Firebase Storage with per-user access controls. We do not sell or share your data with third parties. When you use AI features, your video content is sent to Google's Gemini API for processing, and the results are stored in your account. Google's Gemini API has its own data handling policies, which you can review on Google's website.
Yes. Notch supports exporting your notes as plain text or Markdown. The export includes all notes for a given video, with timestamps formatted for readability. This is useful for sharing notes with classmates, including them in a report, or backing up your work to another system. You can export notes for a single video from the video's options menu.
If a YouTube video fails to load, check that the URL is correct and that the video is publicly available (Notch cannot access private or age-restricted YouTube videos). For direct URLs, ensure the server allows cross-origin access (CORS) — some servers block video playback from external sites. For uploaded files, make sure the file format is supported by your browser (MP4 with H.264 encoding has the broadest compatibility). If the issue persists, try refreshing the page or clearing your browser cache.
Transcription time depends on the length of the video and current server load. A typical 30-minute video takes one to three minutes to transcribe. Longer videos (one hour or more) can take proportionally longer. The progress banner at the top of the screen shows the current status of the transcription job. If a transcription appears stuck for more than ten minutes, try refreshing the page and checking whether the transcript has already been generated — sometimes the progress indicator does not update correctly even though the backend has completed the work.
If you are on the free tier and have exhausted your 500,000-token budget, you can upgrade to Pro to get 10 million tokens per month. If you are on the Pro tier and have used your monthly allocation, your budget will reset at the start of your next billing cycle. In the meantime, manual note-taking and all non-AI features continue to work without any restrictions. You can still watch videos, take timestamped notes, organize notebooks, and search your existing notes and transcripts.