Youtube integration is far worse now, Integrated Gemini summary is better
complete
Steven Lam
It generally doesn't summarize well, takes excessive time to summarize and sometimes says it summarizes it with no output.
The previous YouTube integration was much better. I can't use it in its current state.
I've been reverting to Gemini summaries as they're quick and accurate.
The timestamps are also not interactive, which seems like an oversight.
Milind Mishra
updated the status to
complete
We've released the version that helps you see the summaries directly in the YouTube page that helps you make a decision to watch the video or not. And in a more research based manner in case you want to talk to the video, essentially you can do that in the extension sidebar while the YouTube video is an active page you can query about the things in the YouTube video and Merlin agent can talk to the transcripts that is available and then answer you accordingly.
We would love to hear your feedback about the feature essentially if there are things that are non-optimal for you we would love to hear. How would you like to see the future grow into in your day-to-day usage, thank you!
J
Jason Parker
Milind Mishra much better. I wish it didn't default to the transcript. I find it very distracting and I am constantly moving to "summary". I think the older version just offered an opportunity to download the transcript which was way better.
Milind Mishra
Merged in a post:
New format of Extension not working well and exceptional non-user friendly.
J
Jason Parker
What the heck happened to the Merlin Extension. It defaults to "transcript" and if I click on "summary" and "summarize the whole video" it now opens up a side window that disappers if you go to another tab or open up another window. The previous options of summarize was great. Then if I wanted to dive deeper I could just click on key insights. And then even better I simply clicked on the last tab that created a sort of report.
Now, I have to click on summarize the whole video. It now takes forever to get a summary. It is literally unusable now. It takes so long as "I will get the transcript for the first chapter"...then it just processess for forever.
Please go back to the older format. It was fast, helped me make decisions about whether I should watch the whole video or not. I might as well just use co-pilot or gemini now.
Here is what it looks like:
Summarise this YouTube video chapter by chapter.
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
Watched the video
Watched
Deepseek drops another HUGE breakthrough
0:00–1:00
The user wants a chapter-by-chapter summary of the YouTube video "Deepseek drops another HUGE breakthrough." I will use the provided youtube_transcript tool to get the content for each chapter.
First, I will get the transcript for the first chapter, "dSpark intro" (0:00 to 1:05).
Watched 0:00–1:05
Watched 0:00–1:00
Watched
Deepseek drops another HUGE breakthrough
0:00–1:05
Watched 0:00–25:23
Watched 0:00–1:00
Watched 0:00–1:00
Watched 0:00–1:00
Watched
Deepseek drops another HUGE breakthrough
0:00–1:00
Watched 0:00–25:23
Watched 0:00–1:00
Watched the video
Watched the video
Watched 0:00–1:00
Watched 0:00–1:00
The user wants a chapter-by-chapter summary of the YouTube video. I should use the youtube_transcript tool to read each chapter.
First, I will read the first chapter, which is from 0:00 to 1:05.
Watched 0:00–1:05
Milind Mishra
updated the status to
planned
Milind Mishra
Hi Steven Lam , we're really sorry about the experience. We've heard similar feedback from other users, and we're working on improving things around the feature. Thank you for being patient, we'll make sure it gets better.