Glasp

Turning Reading into Shareable Knowledge: A Comprehensive Review of the Glasp Tool

Many of us spend long hours reading articles and watching YouTube, only to find ourselves, after just a few weeks, unable to recall what we learned. The Glasp tool was created specifically to address this problem—not by merely saving links, but by building a social network of knowledge that connects you to what you’ve read and to those who share the same interests. This review takes an in-depth look at the tool in terms of functions, features, practical use, pricing, and comparison with competitors.

What is the Glasp tool?

Glasp is an abbreviation for Greatest Legacy Accumulated as Shared Proof, and it is a social web highlighter tool that allows users to highlight any text on web pages, PDF files, and YouTube videos, then organize those highlights, export them, and share them with a community of learners.

The tool is primarily available as an extension for the Chrome, Edge, and Brave browsers, and grants each user a public personal page that aggregates everything they have highlighted from texts, making it at the same time a knowledge management tool and a social learning tool. It relies on artificial intelligence technologies through its integration with models such as ChatGPT and Claude to generate instant summaries of YouTube clips and long articles.

The company was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Japan and the United States, and it has attracted a large user base of researchers, students, content creators, and investors who need to absorb large amounts of information daily.

Key Features

1. Highlighting on web pages

Once the extension is installed, you can select any text on any web page and choose the highlight color from four colors (yellow, green, blue, pink), and you can add a text note (Atomic Note) associated with each highlight. Everything is saved automatically in your account without needing to press any save button.

2. AI YouTube Summary (YouTube Summary)

When you open any video on YouTube, a side panel appears displaying the full transcript of the video, and with one click you can send this text to ChatGPT, Claude, or Bard to get an instant summary. This means you can grasp the content of a one-hour video in two minutes. You can also highlight parts of the video’s written transcript and sync them with your account.

3. PDF Reader with Highlighting

Glasp supports highlighting PDF files opened in the browser, which benefits academic researchers who work with PDF research papers. Each highlight is automatically saved with the corresponding page number.

4. Exporting to knowledge management tools

Glasp allows exporting highlights in multiple formats including Markdown, CSV, HTML, and TXT, with support for direct integration with Notion, Obsidian, Roam Research, Logseq, and RemNote. Exporting to Markdown preserves colors, source information, and the date.

5. The Social Feed

You can follow other users and view what they highlight in a continuous social feed. If you follow a researcher in the field of machine learning, for example, their highlights from the latest research papers will appear to you as soon as they read them. This makes knowledge discovery more spontaneous.

6. Public Profile Page

Each user has a public page that displays the total of their highlights organized by date, source, and topic. This page can be made available to the public or kept private. Many users use it as an intellectual identity card that reflects their reading interests.

7. Full-text search and tag filtering

You can search across all your saved highlights using keywords, with the option to add tags to each highlight to make it easier to retrieve later. Glasp also allows browsing highlights by the topics you follow, such as “philosophy” or “entrepreneurship”.

8. Atomic Notes

Alongside each highlight, an interpretive personal note can be written. These notes are collected on a separate page that can be exported separately from the original texts, making it easier to build a personal idea base inspired by reading.

How to Use: Step-by-Step Guide

1. Sign up: Go to glasp.co and create an account via Google or Twitter. The process takes less than a minute.
2. Install the extension: After signing up, you will be automatically directed to the Chrome Store to install the extension. Click “Add to Chrome” and then confirm the installation.
3. First highlight: Open any article and select text by clicking and dragging; the highlight color bar will appear immediately. Choose a color and the highlight will be saved right away.
4. Add a note: After highlighting, click the pen icon next to the highlighted text to add a comment or a personal note.
5. Using YouTube summary: Open any YouTube video and you will automatically find the Glasp side panel containing the full transcript. Click “Open AI” and choose your preferred model to get the summary.
6. Social discovery: From the main dashboard, go to the “Explore” tab to search for people by interests and follow them.
7. Export: From the highlights page of any article, click “Export” and choose the appropriate format. To send them to Notion, for example, choose HTML or use the direct integration if it is available in your account.

Practical Features and Benefits

For Researchers and Students

A PhD student who reads ten research papers a week can highlight the key paragraphs from each paper while adding their personal notes, then export everything to Obsidian to build a concept map. What used to require rereading the entire paper later has become instantly retrievable.

For content creators and writers

A writer researching for an article can highlight quotes from multiple sources and export them all at once in Markdown format, while preserving the source of each quote. This greatly shortens the reference-gathering stage.

For investors and market analysts

An analyst who follows dozens of economic reports and articles daily uses Glasp to highlight key figures and indicators, then shares their public page with colleagues instead of sending manual note files.

For self-learning professionals

Someone who follows YouTube to learn programming can use the summary feature to quickly check the content of a clip before watching it, then highlight the transcript text for the most important parts. This saves valuable time in the initial evaluation.

Disadvantages and Challenges

Limited Browser Support

The extension is effectively available only for Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Opera). Firefox and Safari users are outside the scope of official support so far, which is a fundamental limitation for a portion of users.

Lack of a full mobile app

There is no iOS or Android app that allows highlighting from the phone. Saved highlights can be viewed via the mobile browser, but creating new highlights is limited to desktop. This hinders those who read a lot on the phone.

General nature of highlights

By default, your highlights are public and visible to anyone who visits your profile. This may pose a problem for those who read content of a sensitive personal or professional nature. The profile can be made private, but this removes the social nature that is the core of the tool.

Conflict with some websites

Some websites with special protection or complex design prevent highlighting from working properly. Banking sites and some paid educational platforms may not work with Glasp as they should.

Search is still limited

The search function in highlights works only on exact words and does not support semantic search (Semantic Search). After accumulating hundreds of highlights, it becomes difficult to find a highlight by its meaning if you don’t remember its exact words.

Relying on external tools for summaries

The YouTube Summary feature relies on opening a new window in ChatGPT or others, instead of generating the summary directly within Glasp. This means that the user also needs an account in those services.

Comparison with competing tools

Glasp vs Readwise

Readwise is a professional tool for managing highlights from books and articles, and it features a “daily review” function that sends random highlights from your past readings to help you memorize. Glasp is better in terms of live web highlighting and the social aspect, but Readwise excels in integration with e-books (Kindle and Apple Books) and in spaced repetition review.

Glasp vs Hypothesis

Hypothesis is an open-source annotation and highlighting tool that is widely used in academic circles because it enables collaborative annotation of research sources. Glasp excels in ease of use and integration with AI tools, while Hypothesis is more widespread in university environments because it is completely free and open source.

Glasp vs Liner

Liner is a similar highlighting tool, but it stands out with a powerful mobile app and smart content recommendations. Glasp excels in integration with knowledge management tools and in the social feature, but Liner wins in the mobile experience.

Glasp vs Pocket / Instapaper

Pocket and Instapaper are tools for saving and reading later, not for live highlighting. Comparing them with Glasp shows that Glasp is deeper in engaging with content, but these two are better for those who want to separate the saving stage from the reading stage.

Practical examples of use

Scenario 1: Preparing a Research File for an Article

A researcher in digital marketing reads five articles about consumer behavior. In each article, she highlights important statistics and quotes in different colors (yellow for numbers, blue for quotes, green for her own ideas). After finishing, she exports all highlights in Markdown format to Notion in less than a minute, and the team finds a well-organized, ready document instead of scattered text files.

Scenario 2: Summarizing a YouTube Podcast Conversation

An executive wants to follow a two-hour conversation with an economist. He opens the clip and clicks the “Summarize” button in Glasp’s sidebar, which takes him to ChatGPT with the full transcript of the conversation. In 30 seconds, he gets a 10-point summary based on which he decides whether the clip is worth watching in full or not.

Scenario 3: Building a Personal Knowledge Network

A developer reads daily on tech blogs. After three months of using Glasp, they have accumulated more than 800 highlights. They export them to Obsidian to build a graph that shows how concepts like “API Design,” “Microservices,” and “Event-Driven Architecture” intersect across different sources, and they discover connections they hadn’t realized before.

Scenario 4: Collaborative Learning in a Work Team

A team of five people follows developments in the field of artificial intelligence. They agree that each member follows the other members on Glasp. Instead of sending links in Slack daily, each person sees in their social feed exactly what their colleagues are reading and what they find important.

Pricing

Glasp relies on a freemium model with different tiers:

• Free plan: Includes unlimited highlighting on web pages, a YouTube summary (relying on external ChatGPT), export in all formats, and integration with Notion and Obsidian. Most core functions are available for free.
• Paid (Premium) plan: Includes expanded AI features such as chatting with your highlights (Chat with your highlights), more accurate semantic search, and advanced analytics for reading patterns. The paid plan starts at around $9 per month according to the latest available information, but prices may change and the official website should be checked to confirm.
• For organizations and teams: Special options for teams are available through direct contact with the company.

It is worth noting that the free plan is sufficient for most individual uses, and you can start with it without any financial commitment.

Evaluation and Tips

Who benefits most from Glasp?

• Researchers and university students: especially those who work with PDF research papers and need to move between multiple sources.
• Writers and content creators: who collect materials from multiple sources and need to organize and export them quickly.
• Knowledge workers: who read daily in their field and want to build an organized personal reference base.
• Educational YouTube viewers: who watch hours of content and want to extract information more efficiently.

Who might Glasp not be suitable for?

• Those who read exclusively on their phone, as the mobile experience is currently almost non-existent.
• Those who care about complete privacy and don’t want any social aspect to their reading.
• Those who read digital books (Kindle) as a primary source, for whom Readwise is more suitable.
• Those who use Firefox exclusively for all their tasks.

Tips for Getting Started

1. Start by highlighting one important article and try exporting it to the knowledge management tool you actually use.
2. Don’t enable the public page right away; keep it private until you’ve accumulated a suitable amount of highlights and have seen how they’re displayed.
3. Follow three or four people in your field immediately so you can feel the value of the social feed.
4. Use the four colors with a consistent system from the beginning (for example: yellow for definitions, blue for statistics, green for practical ideas) so your highlights don’t become a meaningless colorful mess.

Summary

Glasp is not merely a highlighting tool; rather, it is a serious attempt to transform the reading process from an individual, consumptive activity into a productive and socially connected process. Its core strengths are centered on ease of use, deep integration with popular knowledge management tools, and the YouTube summary feature, which is considered one of the most productive features ever.

On the other hand, limited mobile support, the absence of semantic search, and certain privacy-related limitations are points worth considering before adopting the tool as a primary option.

Overall recommendation: If you spend hours each week reading digital content—whether articles, research papers, or YouTube clips—then Glasp is worth trying right away, since its free plan is more than sufficient to judge how well it fits your needs. Start at glasp.co and invest ten minutes in the initial setup, and you’ll quickly realize whether this kind of knowledge organization makes a real difference in how you work.