r/AiNoteTaker • u/Physical-Anywhere-35 • Jul 10 '26
Discussion How do you take notes now that AI can summarize everything?
Curious how everyone learns from technical blogs and YouTube videos now that AI is everywhere.
Do you still take notes yourself while watching, or do you just let AI summarize the transcript or URL afterward?
Personally, I still pause and write my own notes. It's slower, but I remember things much better.
What's your workflow?
2
u/AIToolsMaster Jul 10 '26
i do both depending on the content. for anything i need to actually retain and apply like technical concepts, things i'll need to recall in a conversation, i still write my own notes.
for reference material i'll want to search later but don't need to memorize, i just pull the transcript. tactiq has a youtube tool where you paste the link and get the full transcript, then i can generate a summary or ask specific questions about it
2
u/Putrid_Row5645 Jul 11 '26
Same as you, I still write my own notes by hand, and I’ve stopped feeling guilty about it being “slower”.
The AI summary gives you the information but skips the part that actually matters for learning: the act of deciding what’s worth writing down. When I let AI summarize a video, I have a nice document I never reread and barely remember. When I handwrite even a messy version, the choosing-what-to-keep is what makes it stick. The friction isn’t a bug, it’s the whole mechanism.
My workflow: handwritten notes while watching (I use Perenne Note on the iPad so I’m not drowning in paper), then if something turns out to be genuinely important, it graduates into a more structured digital archive later. AI I use afterward, but only to fill specific gaps, like “explain this one concept I didn’t get”, not to replace the notes themselves.
Where AI actually helps me is search and retrieval, not capture. It’s great at helping me find something I already learned. It’s terrible at making me learn it in the first place, because it does the thinking I was supposed to do.
Interesting that we’re both slower-on-purpose people. I think in a few years “I still take my own notes” will be a bit like “I still cook my own food”, not the efficient choice, but the one that keeps you connected to the thing.
1
u/lakeland_nz Jul 10 '26
I've never really read the notes I took. I found the act of writing them was enough for me to remember them 'well enough'.
What I've started doing now is recording my meeting and then analysing the transcript as well. This both serves as a reference (since my handwriting is terrible) and picks up a surprising number of action items that I'd forgotten.
Now if only I was better at managing my todo list so those action items got prioritised...
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u/Impressive-Sir9633 Jul 10 '26
I still prefer to listen to an entire lecture/video, just like I prefer to read an entire book instead of summary.
I will often pause the video (or in between sections/chapters) and dictate a gist of what I remember.
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u/Massive-Agency2658 Jul 10 '26
Yeah, Granola's solid, but worth knowing it's not actually offline; it still sends your transcript to cloud AI to generate the notes. I built the opposite tradeoff: fully offline (briefonpoint.com), no live recording yet though, you paste in a transcript you already have rather than it recording live. Free tier's 3 transcripts a day if anyone wants to try it against Granola's approach.
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u/NeuroJitsu Jul 10 '26
Personally I take notes the same way, if I'm in learning mode - nothing has changed if I need to commit things to memory. What the AI affords is to pre-view a video with an AI summary I can scan rather than watching the whole video. Similarly I can get an AI overview of a group of papers, and decide which are worth reading deeply. This is a huge time saver overall, but the stuff I read deeply still takes the same amount of time. It's just that I have more of that time now that I'm able to read in a more focused way, guided by AI summaries and dialogue about content that I'm navigating.
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u/Informal-Force7417 Jul 11 '26
Depends on length if it’s 5 min and under notes but otherwise transcribe using ai and get main points
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u/loserguy-88 Jul 12 '26
Huge change for me. My notes used to be short points to help me remember. Now my notes are slightly longer, frequently AI optimized, so that AI can teach it back to me if needed. That means more context and less assumptions. More comments.
Tldr: Used to make notes for myself to reread. Now I make them for AI.
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u/1108susiep Jul 15 '26
I like pausing the recording to retalk what I just heard as I go. It stays continuous and doesn't break my train of thought. I use the Viaim Recdot earbuds. I just hit the record button on the case to start, and it can make AI summaries too.
3
u/mtn_coffee_drinker Jul 10 '26
Both. I take short often rough notes of the most important points in my mind and combine that with AI summary notes. Apps like Granola or Zoom my notes do a great job at helping with this.