YouTube Chapters & Timestamp Generator — Lab Tools

About

Add chapters to your YouTube videos in one click — no API key, no sign-up, free.

Chapters (the timestamps in a video's description and progress bar) help viewers navigate and boost your SEO — but writing them by hand is tedious, and most tools make you paste in your own paid OpenAI key. This one doesn't. Open your video, click the icon, and get a clean, ready-to-paste chapter list built from the video's captions.

00:00 Intro
01:24 First Topic
03:10 The Main Demo
...

WHAT IT DOES
• Generates chapters with timestamps from any YouTube video that has captions
• AI-written titles — clear, descriptive section names, free, no API key required
• One-click copy of the whole block, formatted for your description (first chapter at 0:00, as YouTube requires)
• Choose how many chapters: fewer/longer or more/shorter
• Pick the caption language track
• Works with manual and auto-generated captions

WHY IT'S DIFFERENT
• Free, and you never enter an API key.
• Follows YouTube's chapter rules automatically: first chapter at 0:00, at least 3 chapters, each at least 10 seconds.
• If the AI engine is busy or offline, it falls back so you still get chapters.

GREAT FOR
• Creators who want navigable, SEO-friendly chapters without the busywork
• Long-form video, tutorials, podcasts, interviews, lectures
• Anyone tired of tools that demand a paid API key

HOW TO USE
1. Open a YouTube video that has captions.
2. Click the extension icon.
3. Press “Generate chapters”.
4. Click “Copy chapters” and paste the block into your video's description.
If a video has no captions, you'll get a clear message — nothing breaks.

PRIVACY
• We never collect your account data, watch history, or identity.
• Only the video's PUBLIC captions are used.
• For AI titles, that public transcript is sent to our Lab Tools service (on Cloudflare) to write the titles, then discarded — we don't store or sell it. Prefer fully local? Switch to the on-device or Basic title engine and nothing leaves your browser.
• Minimal permissions: the extension only acts when you click it. No host permissions.

🛣️ ROADMAP — WHAT'S COMING NEXT
We're actively building, and what we add next depends on you:
• ✅ Available now: AI chapters, density control, language picker, one-click copy
• 🔜 SEO keyword hints inside chapter titles
• 🔜 Bulk chapters across a playlist or channel
• 🔜 More interface languages

⭐ HELP US BUILD IT
If this saves you time, please leave a rating and a short review — it tells us people want this and decides what we build next. Got a request? Drop it in a review. Thank you! 🙏

Part of Lab Tools — simple, free utilities for YouTube creators.
Need the full transcript instead? Try our YT Transcript Extractor. Need translated subtitles? Try Subtitle Auto-Translator.