How to Make YouTube Annotations with Inspod

Before live videos streaming made audience interaction much easier for content creators, video makers had to find another way to leave commentary and notes in their videos even after the final product was edited. YouTube’s solution was its annotations feature. This annotation tool allowed creators to add what were essentially speech bubbles as interactive cards, which would appear in the video player at the desired time.

As well advertised as video annotations were for interaction, YouTube soon began looking to expand its accessibility for mobile devices; Unfortunately, annotations were not seen as a popular feature to continue for the mobile shift. This led to the company officially removing its annotations editor in 2017 and left interested video creators scrambling to find a new annotation editor.

Since then, you can find a new alternative to annotations, with the help of Inspod. Inspod is an application that allows you to collect and share inspiring moments from the videos and podcasts you consume. With Inspod, you can capture key moments from these broadcasts and make time-stamped notes that you can even then share with your social network.

Being able to simply label annotations in content can be highly beneficial for various areas of your life, including business, education, leisure, and other avenues of personal growth. By taking notes on your favorite videos and podcasts, you can organize your thoughts and open up the topic of discussion to your wider social circle.

Before we go into more detail, we want to offer the story of why YouTube annotations came to an end, and why there is still a demand for this service even after it shut down so many years ago. And if you’re one of those people who feel that demand, then by the end of this guide, you’ll understand how and why you should use Inspod.

What are YouTube Annotations and How Did They Work?

YouTube Annotations were essentially a feature request that allowed users to add text to their videos even after they were edited and released. The text would appear in annotation blocks that resembled a traditional text box, with the ability for you to change the annotation background color to blend in or stand out from your video. This offered content creators the opportunity to make updates to certain portions of a video, even long after the video was published. This was also great for refreshing or adding in new links and fact-check updates, as well as being another useful form of commentary for creators.

But while these were useful for many creators and watchers, as YouTube looked to expand into mobile, these now became“annoying pop-up annotations” and “funny speech bubbles”, without supported functionality in mobile videos. This wasn’t technically the end of clickable annotations for YouTube, but the journey of their first annotation system came to an end in 2017.

Now, YouTube has introduced Cards and End Screens, which is a more native form of a YouTube annotation link, that can be placed throughout the video to offer your viewers a link to a poll, video, or entire playlist. As you can see, this offers some of the functionality of annotations, but not all, so if you still desire a truer annotation system, you should turn to Inspod for help.

How to Delete Old YouTube Annotations

Now, even though YouTube no longer allows you to create or edit annotations, you might be curious if existing videos can retain this feature, and whether it is possible to archive annotations or use external links. While some creators might not mind as much, as they don’t feel their older videos are relevant, other video makers will want to polish all their published content from the very beginning. You may want to remove annotations because they contain irrelevant information, broken links, or because you can no longer make helpful edits. Whatever the reason, there’s good news when it comes to removing annotations.

YouTube made an effort in 2018 to completely erase annotation history from its site. Therefore, all old YouTube annotations should have been removed from any video featuring them on the platform. With the functionality no longer being supported, they will not appear in videos.

This does present a problem for some older styles of content that relied on annotations to make them interactive. In the case of these videos, the loss of annotations means that they can’t appeal to viewers like they used to. If you haven’t made YouTube videos in a while, or are accustomed to an older form of YouTube, then you’ll want to prepare yourself to create with alternative annotation tools. Cards and End Screens offer some helpful features, but for a robust annotation system, you should rely on a product like Inspod.

A New Way to Make YouTube Annotations

While Inspod is incredibly useful for YouTube annotations, its usefulness is even greater, as you can use it to also make annotations for your favorite podcasts. The goal of Inspod is to empower not only creators but their audiences with the capability to leave meaningful annotations on content to incentivize further engagement.

While YouTube’s Annotations, and now their Cards and End Screens are the only usable features for video creators, now audience members can leave their own meaningful marks on content with timestamps, and with key features that support sharing their annotations with the rest of their circle on social media platforms. If you haven’t made annotations before, you may be wondering how it could be useful for your enjoyment and interaction with content. Well, let’s provide a few examples of what you can do with Inspod.

Recipes

Cooking videos are incredibly popular, though they may not always come with a convenient ingredient list or written directions. Using Inspod for annotations, you could leave a note on videos or podcasts that share details about the number of ingredients used, relevant brands, and even the directions you need to follow so you can reference this information when you want to follow the recipe yourself.

Arts and Crafts

Arts and Crafts are another categories of content that can come with a lot of materials and instructions. If you want to make a craft for yourself, and you want to make obtaining a list of materials more straightforward, you can use Inspod to make annotations. If you have a crafting group that would like to follow along with you, you can then even share your annotations on social media and try to manage Instagram accounts for personal or business use.

How-To Videos

How-to videos and podcasts are incredibly helpful for learning how to repair things and handle intricate tasks that might not be easily approachable. In this case, it might help you to break down the larger project into simpler actions. Using annotations, you can define one step at a time, so you can make the larger project much easier to approach.

Lessons and Education

When it comes to history lessons, science, or even mathematics, educational videos can be a great help, but sometimes you are looking to highlight some key points in an otherwise extended presentation. With the help of annotations, you can make notes of important events or topics that you want to research further, or that you would like to note as vital info.

Workouts

Workouts are another video category that has gained a lot of popularity, though you may notice that over time you have your own commentary you want to add to a workout. Maybe you want to skip something because it is too intensive, or you want to note your maximum reps so that you can work to improve your achievements. There are a lot of opportunities to use annotations to further your fitness goals.

These are just some of the many use cases that annotations can help with. Visit our website and find some more inspiration or think about past times when you would have valued some extra commentary on your favorite podcasts or videos.

How to Create Timestamp Notes Using Inspod

Creating Timestamp Notes with Inspod is incredibly simple, thanks to the fact that you can watch your favorite YouTube videos or podcasts right in the application. Once you have found your desired videos/podcasts, the Inspod app interface will offer you easy shortcuts for adding your own annotations. Once you have found the moment that inspires you, you can leave a note with a timestamp and capture your thoughts for this important moment.

You then even have the ability to view all of your notes and further organize them with tags and time-stamped outlines. If you’re really eager to share your notes, then you can publish your annotations on your favorite social networks, and offer your insights to the world!

If you want to follow these steps to make your own timestamp notes, then don’t forget to sign up for the Inspod web app or download the Inspod app for free.

For your best streaming content annotation tool, use Inspod

It has been a long time since YouTube annotations were relevant or even usable, but that doesn’t mean the feature is less popular. The concept of video annotation is still very alive today. On top of just video streaming, podcasts and audio content have skyrocketed in popularity. With all of the information that this content contains, it is incredibly helpful to have a system to lay out your thoughts and capture inspiring moments.

Inspod’s ability to provide annotations for video content and podcasts alike is an incredible step forward in furthering viewer and listener engagement, not only for creators but for the audience as well. You may have a podcast that you love, and you want to let your friends know what specific parts of an episode are worth a listen to. Making annotations on this podcast and then sharing them on social media with Inspodis a great way to include your social circle into your content habits, and make the event more inclusive for everyone.

Maybe you came across a workout video and don’t know which exercises are the best for you to begin with. You could have a trainer annotate this video and send you the results, allowing you to see their suggestions to improve. There are so many ways that annotations can help elevate your video and podcast experiences, so we hope that you’ll consider joining Inspod for free!

For a great post about how you can use Inspod to further your microlearning, visit our blog here. You can also check out the Inspod site to learn more about our features and how to make the most of this application.

(Feature image source by Photo by Ivan Samkov on Pexels)