Studyio guide

What Studyio is

YouTube has some of the best free courses in the world, but it's built for watching, not for finishing. Playlists don't remember where you were, notes end up in another app, and nothing checks whether you understood. Studyio adds what a course needs around the YouTube video:

• Chapters and progress. Every video becomes a chapter you tick off, with a progress bar for the whole course.
• Notes beside the video. Write while you watch; each note can hold a timestamp that jumps back to that moment.
• A quiz after each chapter, plus flashcards and quick practice on your dashboard, so you remember what you watched.
• Habits that keep you going: a daily streak, an optional deadline with reminders, and a focus timer.
• A certificate when you finish, with a public link anyone can check.

The videos themselves always play from YouTube, in YouTube's own player. Studyio doesn't host or change them (see YouTube, creators and ads).

Getting started

1. Find or paste a course

Paste a link to a YouTube playlist or a single video on the home page, or pick a course other students are taking from the course library. You can check a link and preview a library course before you have an account.

2. Sign in

To save a course, sign in with Google, or enter your email and type the one-time code we send you. There is no password to remember. Signing in takes you to your dashboard if you already have courses, or back to the home page if you don't.

3. Start the first chapter

Your course page lists every chapter with its status. Press Start, watch, take notes, and answer the short quiz at the end. Your place is saved, so you can stop at any time and pick up exactly where you left off.

Courses and chapters

Playlists and single videos

A playlist becomes a course with one chapter per video. A single video is one chapter, or, if it is at least 40 minutes long, you can switch on Divide into chapters. Studyio then uses the video's own timestamps from its description (combining short ones) or, without timestamps, cuts it into equal parts, each at least 15 minutes. You can switch between the whole video and the divided version later in the course's settings; your watched parts and notes move over with you.

Limits

• You can have up to 3 courses at a time on the free plan. Deleting a course frees its slot, and inviting friends adds more.
• A course can hold up to 30 hours of available video.
• You can add up to 5 new playlists or videos a day that nobody has added before. Courses already in the library don't count.

Chapter status

• Not started: you haven't watched it yet.
• Watched: you watched at least 90% of it, or reached its end, but haven't taken its quiz.
• Completed: watched and quiz taken. A chapter never goes back to an earlier status.
• Unavailable: the video can't be played any more (see when a video changes on YouTube).

Only the parts you actually played count: skipping ahead doesn't mark a chapter as watched, except that reaching the very end always opens its quiz. Course progress is the share of available chapters that are Watched or Completed.

Course settings

Each course can be renamed, given a deadline, and have its end-of-chapter quizzes, flashcards and welcome-back refresher switched on or off. Turning quizzes or flashcards off also keeps that course out of your dashboard practice. Deleting a course removes your progress and notes for it; certificates you earned stay.

Watching a chapter

The learning page shows the video on the left and your notes on the right. It opens where you left off, and Previous / Next take you through the course. If you haven't taken a chapter's quiz yet, Next offers it first.

Keyboard shortcuts

• K or Space play / pause
• J / L (or the arrow keys) back / forward 5 seconds
• 0 back to the start of the chapter
• T add a timestamp to your notes (Alt+T while typing)
• M mute, C captions
• F focus mode, and N opens your notes inside it

Focus timer

A study timer runs while you're on the learning page: 20 minutes of study, then a 5-minute break. You can change both lengths or turn it off. It pauses while you answer a quiz.

Welcome-back refresher

If you return to a course after more than 24 hours, Studyio first asks you 2 quick questions from what you already watched, to warm up your memory. You can switch this off per course.

Notes

My notes is a page per chapter next to the video, with headings, lists, code and timestamps. Click a timestamp to jump the video to that moment. Notes save as you type; if you lose your connection they are kept on your computer and saved as soon as you're back online. If the same chapter is open in two tabs, Studyio asks which version to keep instead of overwriting one. Each chapter can hold up to 100,000 characters.

Studyio Notes is a ready-made summary of each chapter with its key topics, next to your own notes, for a quick recap before or after watching.

On the course page, the Notes tab collects every chapter's notes in one place, where you can edit them, copy them as Markdown, or download them as a Markdown file or a PDF. Timestamps in the download link to the exact moment on YouTube.

Chapter quizzes

When a chapter ends, a short multiple-choice quiz checks what you understood: 3 questions for a chapter under 10 minutes, 5 up to 60 minutes, and 8 for longer ones. Chapters shorter than 10 minutes have no quiz and are completed when they end.

• Your first answer to each question counts, and you see the explanation straight away.
• Each chapter has a larger bank of questions, so a retake asks the ones you haven't seen before repeating any.
• You can skip a quiz and take it later from the course page (Take quiz / Retake quiz).
• Questions are written automatically from the video, so one can occasionally be wrong. Report it with the flag button; once 3 learners report the same question it is hidden while it's checked.

Questions for a new course are prepared in the background and are usually ready by the time you reach the end of the first chapter.

Flashcards and practice

• Quick Quiz on your dashboard asks one question at a time from chapters you've watched in any course, favouring ones you got wrong and ones you haven't seen for a while.
• Flashcards show a key idea on the front and the answer on the back. Mark a card Got it and it stops appearing; Review later and it comes back more often. When you know them all, you're told you're all caught up.
• Review, a tab on each course page, goes through that course's questions and flashcards in one place.
• From any practice question you can jump back to the moment in the video it came from.

Practice never changes a chapter's status or your quiz scores.

Streaks, deadlines and reminders

Daily streak

Study for at least 10 minutes in a day and your streak grows by one. Only time actually spent playing a video counts, and days follow your own time zone (set in Account & data).

Deadlines

Give a course a finish date and your dashboard puts it first, showing how many days are left and highlighting it in the last three days.

Reminders

With a deadline set, Studyio can send a browser notification when that course needs some time today: at most one a day, around 6 pm your time. You choose whether to allow it, and can turn it off any time in Account & data.

Certificates

A course's Certificate tab shows a checklist. You can issue the certificate once:

• every available chapter is Watched or Completed,
• every chapter that has a quiz has been attempted, and
• you got at least 50% of the answers right, counting your best attempt at each chapter's quiz.

You choose the name printed on it. The certificate can be saved as a PDF and has a public verification page and QR code, which shows the course and the date but never your score. Certificates stay even if you later delete the course. A certificate shows you finished a course on Studyio; it isn't an accredited qualification.

Explore the course library

Every course anyone adds goes into a shared library, so the next student gets it instantly. Explore searches that library (not all of YouTube) by title, channel and topic, forgives typos, and filters by subject: programming, web development, data, design, exams and more. Each course has a preview with its chapters before you add it. Browse all of them on the course list.

When a video changes or disappears on YouTube

Studyio plays videos straight from YouTube, so the creator stays in control of them. Each playlist is checked with YouTube about once a day, when someone opens the course, and Studyio reacts like this:

A video is deleted, made private, or taken out of the playlist

Its chapter is marked Unavailable and can't be played. It no longer counts toward your progress or your certificate, so you can still reach 100% and earn the certificate with the chapters that remain. Your notes for it are kept and stay editable on the course's Notes tab and in your downloads.

The creator stops other sites from embedding a video

The chapter is also Unavailable here, but it gets a Watch on YouTube button that opens the video at the right moment on youtube.com.

The creator adds new videos to the playlist

You see a New videos prompt on the course and decide whether to add them. Nothing is added to your course without you agreeing, so a course you've finished stays finished.

A title or length changes

The new title and length are copied over. Your progress and notes don't change.

A video becomes available again

Its chapter becomes playable again and counts toward your progress, with everything you had done on it.

The whole playlist is deleted

Every chapter becomes Unavailable. Your course, notes, quiz history and any certificate stay in your account, and you can download your notes at any time.

Quiz questions and flashcards for a chapter are kept as they were; they are never rewritten when a video changes.

YouTube, creators and ads

• Videos play in YouTube's official embedded player, with the creator's name and channel, so creators keep their audience.
• Studyio never downloads, re-uploads or edits videos, and links to the original on YouTube.
• Ads come from YouTube's player, so you may see them. YouTube Premium removes them. Studyio doesn't block or skip ads, which YouTube's terms don't allow.
• Links and resources from a video's description (code, docs, tools) are collected on the course's Resources tab, grouped by chapter.

Your account and data

• Signing in: Google, or a one-time code sent to your email. No passwords.
• Account & data: change your time zone and email preferences, download everything as a ZIP (your data plus one Markdown notes file per course), or delete your account, which removes all of it.
• Invite friends: share your invite link. When a friend who joins through it studies for 15 minutes, you get 1 extra course slot.
• Devices: Studyio is made for a laptop or desktop screen. Public pages like this one, the course library and certificate checks work on phones.

Read the Terms and the Privacy policy for the details.

Frequently asked questions