Annotations Restored for YouTube™

Bring annotation support back to YouTube™!

Annotations Restored for YouTube™ - Restore YouTube Annotations

Annotations Restored for YouTube™ is a ground-breaking Chrome extension designed to bring back the valuable annotation feature that YouTube discontinued in 2019. It does this by scanning the net for any archived annotation files and presenting them on the appropriate videos. In addition, users may load locally saved annotation files (.xml) onto the video of choice, thereby preserving the interactivity and additional information that annotations once provided.
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Extension stats

Users: 30,000+
Rating: 4.32
(115)
Version: 1.2.1 (Last updated: 2023-06-26)
Creation date: 2020-01-21
Risk impact: Low risk impact
Risk likelihood:
Manifest version: 3
Permissions:
  • storage
Size: 360.45K
URLs: Website

Other platforms

Annotations (v2.5.3)
4.38 (80,359) 2,085,581+
Annotations Restored for YouTube™ (v1.2)
4.59 (29) 7,548+
Not available on Edge
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Extension summary

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On January 15 2019, YouTube decided to discontinue annotations. While the feature was frequently abused, it did have many legitimate use cases, such as games, corrections, and a form of commentary that could be toggled on and off. The removal left many older videos obsolete. Annotations Restored fixes this by searching for any archived annotation files and displaying them if found.

Join the Discord!: https://discord.gg/v7xMm2r8wH

LATEST CHANGES (1.2.1)

  • Added Discord link to popup
  • Support for Portuguese by Gersonzao
  • Support for Polish by Kamil K

USAGE The extension will automatically look for a copy of a video's annotations online and display them if found. Annotation files (.xml) that you have saved locally can also be loaded into the current video using the popup.

PERMISSIONS Access your data for www.youtube.com

  • Required to load the annotations into the video player
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User reviews

These summaries are automatically generated weekly using AI based on recent user reviews. Chrome Web Store does not verify user reviews, so some user reviews may be inaccurate, spammy, or outdated.
Pros
  • Works well for the majority of videos
  • Nostalgic experience for users who liked annotations
  • Users appreciate the restoration of old YouTube annotations
Cons
  • Inconsistent performance with certain videos or obscure content
  • Reports of it not working or breaking at times
  • The extension does not allow users to create or edit their own annotations
Most mentioned
  • It works on many videos but not all
  • There are issues with it being broken or not functioning
  • Users would like additional features like an annotation editor
User reviews
Pretty bloody good, on 99.9% of videos i've used this on, it's worked flawlessly. My only issue is that it relies on some kind of cache or web crawl to get the annotations. This means that on really obscure videos, the annotations don't show up. The only way to get them back is if the uplaoder also has the extension and uploads the annotation files. However, this happened to me on literally 1 video after using this for 4 years.
by Mr. Smeghead, 2024-10-12

Looks good, sometimes, it needs to fix some less broken annotations, in case, it should have been working perfectly
by sagad ali, 2024-10-07

oh, now i saw them.
by Arthur Klaus, 2024-09-08
View all user reviews

Extension safety

Risk impact

Annotations Restored for YouTube™ requires very minimum permissions.

Risk likelihood

Annotations Restored for YouTube™ has earned a fairly good reputation and likely can be trusted.

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