Obsidian for YouTube notes: clip, link, remember

Quick answer

Obsidian stores your notes as plain Markdown files on your own device. For video notes, its superpower is linking: the same idea from three different videos can point to one note.

What 125x is: 125x is a web app at 125x.app. You connect your YouTube subscriptions, and it gives you a feed of the latest videos from the channels you follow, each with a summary: a verdict, the 5 key takeaways, and the spoiler, plus Actionable and Lessons tabs with more tips. You read that and decide what's actually worth opening.

Open 125x

Clip the video

The Obsidian Web Clipper saves pages as Markdown files to your vault, stored locally, with templates you can customize and rules that pick a template by website. Set up a YouTube template and every clip lands in the same format.

A simple template

Title, URL, channel, date
## The one thing I'll do
## Takeaways
## Timestamps
## Related: [[topic]]

Link ideas, skip the folders

Make a note per topic, like [[Sleep]] or [[Sales calls]].
In each video note, link to the topics it covers.
Open a topic note later and its backlinks show every video that touched it.

Transcript highlights

If you highlight transcripts in Readwise Reader, the Readwise Official community plugin can sync those highlights into your vault (Readwise docs).

Where 125x fits

Read the 125x summary first. If a video is worth a note, paste the Actionable steps under 'the one thing' and the Lessons under takeaways, then link the topics.

FAQ: questions people ask

How do I save YouTube videos to Obsidian?

Use the official Obsidian Web Clipper with a YouTube template, which saves the page as a Markdown note in your vault.

Can Obsidian import YouTube transcripts?

Not by itself. Some people highlight transcripts in Readwise Reader and sync them with the Readwise Official plugin.

Are Obsidian notes stored locally?

Yes. Obsidian notes are Markdown files in a vault on your device.