u/Insyder0

Built a small Chrome extension recently because I kept struggling with native-speed German YouTube videos 🇩🇪😵‍💫

Usually what happened was:
I’d understand the first sentence or two… then completely lose the thread and start rewinding every 15 seconds 😅

And subtitles definitely help, but for me the difficult part was trying to do everything at once:
👂 listen to German
📖 read subtitles
🧠 mentally translate
🧩 understand context
🏃 somehow keep up before the next sentence already arrived

So I ended up making a tool called Gotcha that adds learner-friendly explanations/briefings to YouTube videos ✨

I started with German because that’s the language I’m personally learning right now 🇩🇪, but the idea can definitely expand to other languages later on 🌍

Depending on the mode, it can:
• ⏸️ give a short briefing before the video
• 💬 explain phrases/idioms and difficult expressions
• 📺 show explanations beside the video while watching
• 📊 estimate rough CEFR difficulty
• ✅ gradually hide vocabulary you already know with a small “I know this” feature

Built mostly by me + an unhealthy amount of conversations with Claude 🤝😅

The explanations are AI-generated, which is also why there are quotas/plans 💸 — each un-cached video costs me a bit in transcript fetching + AI processing.

Honestly though, I’m still very much experimenting and trying to figure out what’s genuinely useful vs unnecessary, so I’d really love feedback from other language learners 🙏

Especially things like:
• What would actually make something like this useful for you?
• Would you prefer explanations before the video or while watching?
• What feels distracting or overkill?

If someone here genuinely wants to test it properly and give feedback, feel free to DM me 💌
and I’m happy to completely remove the quotas making it less annoying for active testers while I iterate on things 😅

Extension Url: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gotcha/lpjilfmbieeejodblaibndmbegldodno