YouTube to flashcards: make a deck from any video link
Upload a YouTube video and QuerySpark writes flashcards from what is actually in it, so you can drill the key terms on exactly what your course covers. Any public YouTube video with captions.
- No credit card
- Free plan after the trial
- Cancel anytime
Drop a PDF, slides or notes
or paste a YouTube link
Quick answer
How do you turn a YouTube video into flashcards?
Paste the YouTube link into QuerySpark. It reads the video's transcript, picks out the terms, formulas and ideas the speaker actually explained, and writes a flashcard deck you can start reviewing with spaced repetition straight away. It takes about a minute, and it only works when the video has captions or a transcript. New accounts get a 3-day Pro trial with no credit card; after that the free plan covers 1 YouTube video and 20 flashcards a month.
- Built from the transcript, so the video needs captions
- About a minute from link to deck
- Free plan: 1 YouTube video and 20 flashcards a month
- Decks export as CSV, which Anki and Quizlet import
How it works
How to turn a YouTube video into flashcards
- 01
Check the video has a transcript
Open the video on YouTube, expand the description and look for 'Show transcript'. If it is there, we can read the video. If it is missing, skip to the no-captions advice further down this page before you spend your monthly video on it.
- 02
Paste the link and choose flashcards
A normal watch link or a youtu.be share link both work. Pick flashcards as the output and set the level, from high school to professional, so the cards match the depth of the video rather than a simplified version of the topic.
- 03
Do one pass the same day
Flip through the whole deck once while the video is fresh and rate every card honestly. That first rating is what the spaced repetition schedule is built on.
- 04
Review a few minutes a day
Cards you miss come back sooner and cards you know fade out. A 20 minute video turns into a few minutes of review each day instead of a rewatch the night before the test.
Example
Flashcards from Lecture
A sample of what you get from a YouTube video on physics. Yours is written from your own file.
Newton's first law
An object keeps its velocity unless a net force acts on it
Newton's second law
F = ma
Newton's third law
Forces come in equal and opposite pairs acting on different bodies
What your flashcards include
- Term and definition cards for every key concept
- Concept cards that ask why and how, not only what
- Cards sized to your material: a short reading gets a short deck
- Spaced repetition built in: no deck settings to configure
How you study them
Flip, rate how well you knew it, and move on. Cards you find hard return sooner; cards you know well fade out until just before you would forget them.
Best for: vocabulary and definitions, formulas and dates, daily ten-minute review.
How we read YouTube videos
Paste the link and we pull the video's transcript, then build questions only from what was actually said, so the set matches the lecture you watched rather than the topic in general.
Get the best results
- Lecture recordings and Crash Course style explainers work best.
- For a playlist, generate one set per video and study them together.
Can ChatGPT make flashcards from a YouTube video?
Not reliably from the link on its own. ChatGPT generally cannot open a YouTube video and read what is said in it, so the dependable route is to open the transcript on YouTube, copy it, paste it into the chat and ask for flashcards. That works, but you then have to move the cards into a flashcard app yourself, and a long transcript is easy to summarise loosely instead of carding properly.
QuerySpark takes the link directly, writes the cards from the transcript, and schedules them for review without any copying. If you already pay for ChatGPT and only need a quick list of terms from one short video, pasting the transcript there is a perfectly reasonable choice.
Which YouTube videos make good flashcards
Flashcards need discrete things to remember: a definition, a formula, a date, the name of a process and its steps. Videos where the speaker says those things out loud make strong decks. Videos that are mostly opinion, storytelling or demonstration make thin ones, because there is little in the transcript to put on the front of a card.
Remember that the transcript only contains speech. An equation written on a whiteboard, a labeled diagram or text on a slide is invisible to us unless the speaker reads it out.
- Strong: recorded university lectures, exam-board revision videos, vocabulary and definition explainers
- Fine: documentaries and history explainers, which give you names, dates and causes
- Better as a quiz: worked-example and problem-solving videos, where the skill is applying a method
- Weak: vlogs, reaction videos and anything where the key content is only on screen
What to do when a video has no captions
Check first: if the CC button is greyed out and there is no 'Show transcript' option, the link will not work. YouTube creates automatic captions for many videos, but not all, and creators can switch them off.
If the video is your own, or your instructor shared the original file with you, upload that file as a recording instead and we transcribe the audio ourselves. File size caps apply: 5 MB on the free plan, 20 MB on Student and 25 MB on Educator. If it is someone else's video, look for another upload of the same lecture or topic that does have captions, or ask the creator to turn captions on.
YouTube to Anki or Quizlet flashcards
There is no direct Anki or Quizlet export, but every deck exports as CSV, and both import CSV. In Anki, use File, Import, pick the CSV and map the first column to Front and the second to Back. In Quizlet, create a set, choose Import and paste the rows with a comma as the separator between term and definition.
You only need to do this if Anki or Quizlet is already where you study. The deck in QuerySpark has spaced repetition built in, so there is nothing to configure if you review it here.
Things that trip people up with YouTube videos
Videos without captions cannot be read from the link. Download the audio and upload it as a recording instead.
Fast-talking explainers pack a lot in; pick a set size that matches the video length.
Questions about youtube to flashcards
Yes, within limits. The 3-day Pro trial with no credit card lets you try it fully, and the free plan afterwards includes 1 YouTube video and 20 flashcards a month. Student is $9 a month, or $7 a month billed yearly and covers 50 videos a month.
No. We work from the transcript, which is only what is spoken. If a key formula or diagram is shown but never read aloud, add it to the deck yourself or make cards from the slides as a PDF.
Use the standard watch link: replace '/shorts/' in the address with '/watch?v=' if a Shorts link is not accepted. In practice a Short rarely has enough spoken content for more than a handful of cards.
No. We fetch the video page the way a logged-out visitor would, so private videos and members-only videos cannot be read. Public videos with captions work.
The deck is sized to what the video covers. A ten minute explainer gives a short, focused deck; an hour-long lecture gives a bigger one. We do not pad a short video with filler cards.
Yes. Flashcards help you keep what you learned; they do not replace understanding it the first time. Watch once, make the deck, then let the reviews do the remembering.
Yes. Choose a quiz as the output to get multiple choice and short-answer questions with explanations. A quiz suits worked-example videos better than flashcards do.
No. Paste the YouTube link. We only need the captions, which most lectures and explainers have.
Upload the audio as a lecture recording instead; we transcribe it before writing questions.
Yes. Export any deck as CSV, which both Anki and Quizlet import.
Yes, to start. New accounts get a 3-day Pro trial with no credit card. After the trial the free plan includes 1 study session, 20 questions and 10 PDF pages a month, and you keep everything you made. You can also try the question generator on pasted text without an account, 3 times a day.
Still stuck? Email us.
Make flashcards from your YouTube videos
Start with a 3-day Pro trial. No credit card, and you keep everything you make.
