How to Make Flashcards from YouTube Videos for Language Learning: By Hand, With a Toolchain, or in One Click
Making flashcards from a YouTube video comes down to four steps: get the video's subtitles in the language you're learning, pick the words or sentences worth keeping, save each one with its original sentence and a timestamp back to that moment, and review them on a spaced-repetition schedule. Here are the three ways to do it — by hand into Anki, with the free asbplayer + Yomitan toolchain, or in one click with LingoKeep — what makes a card worth keeping, and the limits of each.
To turn a YouTube video into flashcards, get its subtitles in the language you're learning, pick the words or sentences worth keeping, save each one with the original sentence and a timestamp back to that second of the video, and let a spaced-repetition schedule bring the cards back. Everything below is about doing those four steps with less friction, because friction is what kills the habit — not the method.
There are three ways to do it in 2026, and they trade setup for effort in opposite directions.
The three ways, compared
| By hand | Toolchain | One click | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Copy subtitle lines into Anki yourself | asbplayer (subtitles + card maker) with Yomitan (pop-up dictionary), sending cards to Anki via the AnkiConnect add-on | LingoKeep, a Chrome extension that puts the dictionary and the save button on the subtitle line |
| What a card carries | Whatever you type or paste | Sentence, word, definition, an audio clip, a screenshot and a link back to the source — the fields asbplayer can fill | Word, its dictionary form and meanings, the full sentence, its translation, and a link to the exact second of the video |
| Setup | Anki only | Two extensions, a dictionary imported into Yomitan, Anki with the AnkiConnect add-on, a deck and a note type, then mapping the fields | Install one extension |
| Review | Anki, on its schedule | Anki, on its schedule | Built-in FSRS review, in the extension or on your phone's browser; Anki export on Pro |
| Cost | Free (Anki is free on computers and Android; its iPhone app is paid) | Free and open source | Free up to 100 cards, with review free forever; Pro is $4.99 a month for unlimited cards |
| Where it runs | Anywhere | Chrome and Firefox — both extensions publish official builds for each | Desktop Chromium browsers, YouTube only |
Capabilities for asbplayer and Yomitan are from their own READMEs and docs, Anki's pricing from apps.ankiweb.net — all checked October 2026. We haven't timed any of the three per card and won't guess; the honest difference is how many windows you touch per card, which the rows above make visible.
By hand works and costs nothing. Open the video's transcript (YouTube's "Show transcript" button sits in the description panel), copy the line, paste it into Anki, look the word up somewhere else, type the meaning. To get back to the moment later, add the timestamp to the video link yourself. It's fine for five cards a week and miserable for fifty.
The toolchain is what the immersion community built to fix that: asbplayer detects YouTube's subtitles and opens a card editor on the current line with one shortcut (Ctrl + Shift + X), Yomitan fills in the definition from a dictionary you've installed, and AnkiConnect drops the finished card — audio and screenshot included — into your deck. It's powerful, it's free, and asbplayer's own getting-started list runs to seven steps, the last of which is your first card. If you already live in Anki, it's the best free option there is.
One click collapses those steps into the subtitle line itself. That's the approach LingoKeep takes; it's also roughly what Language Reactor's paid Pro plan does (saving from subtitles, Anki export), though its free plan only saves words inside its PhrasePump drill — details here.
What makes a card worth making
The capture method matters less than what ends up on the front. Three rules, and the long version — card types, cloze, listening cards — is in the card types that work for languages:
- Keep the sentence, not just the word. The sentence is what tells you which meaning you met, and it gives your memory something to hang on.
- Keep the moment. A timestamp back to the video means you can hear the line again at native speed, in the voice you first heard it in. That's the part copying from a transcript loses first.
- Fewer, better cards. A video will offer you far more unknown words than you can learn. Keep the ones you've met before or will clearly meet again; skip the rest without guilt.
Step by step with LingoKeep
The same steps as the install page, plus the part after it:
- Add it to Chrome (or Edge, Brave, Arc — any desktop Chromium browser) from the Chrome Web Store. It asks for access to YouTube and lingokeep.com, nothing else, and you don't need an account to start.
- Pin it from the puzzle-piece menu, so you can see how many cards are due.
- Open a YouTube video in the language you're learning — Spanish, Japanese, French or German — that has subtitles in that language. The subtitle bar appears under the player, with the translation underneath.
- Click a word you want to keep. The video pauses on a dictionary card with its meanings; save it, and the card takes the sentence, the translation and a link back to that second with it. Drag across several words to save a phrase as one card, or press
sto save the whole current line. - Review. Cards come back on an FSRS schedule — in the extension, or at lingokeep.com/review on your phone. Each review card opens by replaying its clip, so you hear the sentence before you read it.
- Optional: send them to Anki. On Pro, push cards straight into a deck through AnkiConnect or download a CSV — how the export works.
What it's actually like
The first video always produces too many candidates. Every line has something new in it, and the temptation is to save all of it — which is how people end up with three hundred cards in a week and a review pile they quit in the second. The workable rhythm is the opposite: watch for the story, and save only the handful of words that stopped you twice.
The second thing people notice is that the timestamp earns its keep in review, not at capture. A card that replays the original line is a listening card for free; a card that only shows text trains reading, and most learners already read better than they hear.
The limits, honestly
- The video needs subtitles in the language you're learning — written by the creator or auto-generated by YouTube. No subtitle track, nothing to click. YouTube's own help page warns that automatic captions "might misrepresent the spoken content due to mispronunciations, accents, dialects, or background noise", and a card made from a misheard line carries the mistake with it; prefer human tracks for the words you keep.
- Capture needs a desktop browser. Browser extensions don't run in the YouTube app, so every method here captures at a computer. Review is the part that travels: Anki has phone apps, and LingoKeep's review works in your phone's browser.
- LingoKeep is YouTube-only and four languages. If your videos live on Netflix, or you're learning a language outside Spanish, Japanese, French and German, the toolchain or another extension is the honest answer. Full disclosure: LingoKeep is ours.
Where to go next
- What to put on the cards, and how Anki fits: Anki for language learning
- Getting LingoKeep cards into Anki: the Anki export guide
- Why the schedule matters more than the cards: FSRS explained
- Finding videos worth mining: learn Spanish with YouTube · learn Japanese with YouTube
FAQ
Q: Can you make Anki cards from YouTube videos? A: Yes, three ways. By hand, copying subtitle lines from the video's transcript into Anki. With a free toolchain, where asbplayer and the Yomitan dictionary build cards with audio and a screenshot and send them to Anki through the AnkiConnect add-on. Or with an extension like LingoKeep, which saves cards from the subtitle line in one click and exports them to Anki on its Pro plan.
Q: How do I save words from a YouTube video? A: You need something that makes the subtitles clickable. With LingoKeep, you click the word under the video, its dictionary card opens, and saving keeps the word with its sentence, translation and a link back to that second of the video. Without an extension, you copy the line from YouTube's transcript into your notes or flashcard app by hand.
Q: Does the video need subtitles? A: Yes — a subtitle track in the language you're learning, either written by the creator or auto-generated by YouTube. Auto-generated captions work, but they can mishear words, names and fast speech, so a card made from them is worth a second look.
Q: Is it free? A: Making cards by hand and the asbplayer + Yomitan + Anki toolchain are both free. LingoKeep is free for your first 100 cards, and reviewing them on its FSRS schedule stays free with no limit; Pro, at $4.99 a month or $39 a year, removes the card cap and adds Anki export.
Q: Can I review the cards on my phone? A: Yes, though capture happens on a computer. Anki has AnkiDroid on Android (free) and AnkiMobile on iPhone (paid). LingoKeep's review runs in your phone's browser at lingokeep.com/review and can be installed to your home screen.
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