ReadTube – Turn YouTube subscriptions into a personal Substack

I built ReadTube so that I can read my YouTube subscriptions.

YouTube has lots of high quality content. However, videos can be difficult to consume efficiently, especially those that are long and about series topics (e.g. general relativity, quantum physics). So I created this app to solve this need.

There are already many existing YouTube AI transcription websites. However, ReadTube is one step further in that it periodically fetches the updates from the channels I subscribe to so I don't need to paste in the video URL each time. Also it can generate two different versions of summary: one short and one long, as well as a full length article. I can pick which length to consume according to the type of videos.

Some other features: playlist import, translation, notes.

I use the Transcript API to get transcripts for YouTube videos, and JustOneAPI for Bilibili videos. These services rely on the video's native transcripts. So this app does have this one limitation that if a video has no native transcript, it won't work.

The app is built with the "standard" stack: Next.js on Vercel, Tailwind CSS, Postgres on Neon / Prisma, Clerk for auth, Gemini for summary and article generation.

I will probably open source it after I clean up the codebase more.