TLDR

Click the TLDR button on any article and the summary appears in a sidebar, without leaving the page. It handles long-form articles, blog posts and news pieces, and the sidebar keeps the original text in view so you can check the summary against the source. The point is speed: you get the gist in seconds and decide whether the full read is worth it.

TLDR reads a video's transcript and returns a YouTube video summary with key points, each tied to a timestamp. Clicking a timestamp jumps to that moment in the video. That turns a long interview or lecture into a set of bookmarks, so you can watch the two minutes you care about and skip the rest. It needs the video to have a usable transcript.

Drop a PDF into TLDR and it works as a PDF summarizer for the document. It's aimed at research papers, reports and long documents where you want the conclusions before you commit to the full text. The same tool handles a PDF as it does a webpage, so there's nothing new to learn.

TLDR can read content in 40 languages, from English and Spanish to Hindi, Arabic, Japanese and Vietnamese, and can translate the summary into your preferred one. For anyone reading across languages, that means you can summarize a page you can't read fluently and get the result back in a language you can.

Summaries open in a sidebar so you don't lose your place or juggle tabs. A keyboard shortcut, Alt + T by default, summarizes the current page without reaching for the mouse, and you can rebind it in Chrome's extension settings. You can also turn the floating button off on pages where you'd rather not see it.

You can use TLDR without creating an account or paying anything. That lowers the bar to trying it, and it means the core summarize feature works the moment you install it. Sign-in, where it comes up, runs through Google.