About Vidlens
Vidlens is a free, open-source video annotation tool that lets you attach timestamped comments and emoji reactions to any video — and take the whole thing offline as a single ZIP pack.
Why Vidlens exists
Taking notes on a video is painful: you pause, scrub back, copy timestamps by hand into a document, and lose the connection between the note and the moment. Vidlens keeps your thoughts anchored to the exact second they belong to. Click any timestamp and the video jumps right back to that moment.
It works with YouTube, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Twitch, Facebook,
Instagram, Odysee, VK, direct .mp4/.webm links, and your own
video files up to 2 GB.
Who uses it
- Students & researchers — annotate lectures and interviews, export notes as PDF or CSV.
- Video editors & creators — collect timestamped feedback on cuts, share it as a single HTML file.
- Teachers & coaches — mark key moments in performances and training footage.
- Reviewers & QA teams — log issues against screen recordings, with the exact second attached.
- Anyone who wants to review a video offline — the Offline Pack bundles the video, your comments and a standalone viewer.
Private by design
Vidlens has no backend, no account, and no tracking. Everything runs in your browser and your comments are stored locally on your device. The only data that ever leaves your machine is the export files you download yourself.
Open source. The entire application is a few plain HTML/CSS/JavaScript files — no build step, no framework. Read or contribute to the code on GitHub.
The Offline Pack
The flagship feature: one click exports a ZIP containing the video (when available), an interactive offline viewer, your comments in five formats — including SRT subtitles you can overlay on the video in VLC — and the transcript. Learn more in How it works, see 15 use cases, browse the Roadmap, or check the FAQ.
A note on names
Vidlens was previously known as ReactVid / VideoTAG — same project, now living at vidlens.net.