User Guide

The first few minutes in YTLI: you sign in with Google, say what you want to learn, and get your first roadmap.

Everything else in YTLI — your feed, your recommendations, your notifications — is built from what you tell it here, so a clear goal at the start gives you a useful app from the first day.

1. Sign in with your Google account on the web or in the mobile app.
2. Describe what you want to learn in your own words, for example “conversational Spanish in six months”.
3. Answer the short questions about your level, your time and your deadline. Skip any you like.
4. Optionally connect your YouTube account so YTLI can see which channels you already follow.
5. Open your new roadmap and start the first step.

Priya types “I want to learn guitar from beginner to intermediate”, says she has three hours a week and wants to get there in six months. A minute later she has a 26-week roadmap that starts with holding the guitar and tuning it.

The AI reads your goal and works out where it sits — the field, the area within it, the skills involved — and then lays out stages and steps in an order where nothing depends on something taught later.

• You can skip connecting YouTube; roadmaps, For You and AI Notes work without it.
• Every answer you give can be changed later from the roadmap or your profile.

A step-by-step path from where you are to your goal, divided into stages. Each step has a topic, what you will be able to do afterwards, and videos matched to it. Stages end with a revision step, and the roadmap ends with a self-assessment.

It answers “what should I learn?” so you are not choosing at random from millions of videos. You can see the whole journey, what comes next, and how far you have come.

1. Open Learning Roadmaps and choose New roadmap.
2. Describe your goal naturally. There is no list of subjects to pick from — write what you actually want.
3. Add as much or as little detail as you like: why, your level, your time, your deadline, what you already know, what to leave out.
4. Open a step and choose Find videos to match real YouTube videos to it.
5. Mark a step In progress or Completed as you go.

“I want to learn digital marketing for my business” becomes: Business → Marketing → Digital marketing, with stages such as Foundations, Search, Content and Measuring results, each with its own steps.

The AI designs the structure once, when you create the roadmap. After that it never rewrites your plan; it only looks for better videos for the steps you already have.

• Rename, describe, archive, restore or delete any roadmap.
• Add a video to a step yourself, or remove one. Videos you add are never swapped out.
• Choose which roadmap is active — the one your mentor, feed and notifications follow.
• Reset progress on a roadmap without losing its steps.
• The free plan includes 1 learning roadmap. An archived roadmap still counts, so to start a different subject you either delete the one you have or upgrade — Pro and Premium include unlimited roadmaps. When you reach the limit, YTLI shows you the plans instead of the form; your roadmap and its progress are never touched.

A plan gives your roadmap a length and a pace: how many weeks, how many hours a week, and a target date. Each step is given the weeks it belongs to, and YTLI tells you whether you are ahead, on track or behind.

It answers “am I progressing?”. A goal with a date and a weekly amount is far more likely to be reached than an open-ended one.

1. When creating a roadmap, pick a length — three months, six months and a year are offered, or enter any number of weeks.
2. Say how many hours a week you have.
3. Open the roadmap to see this week's objectives and your pace.
4. Choose Edit plan to change the length, hours or date at any time.

A 12-week plan at four hours a week shows “Week 5 of 12 — on track” and lists the two objectives scheduled for this week.

The AI spreads the steps across your weeks when the roadmap is created. Pace is plain arithmetic: the steps that should be finished by this week compared with the steps you have finished.

• Changing the plan re-paces the steps. It never deletes a step or your progress.
• A roadmap without a plan still works; it simply has no weeks or pace.

Every day YTLI looks for newly published videos that fit the steps you are on and about to reach. If it finds one that is clearly better than a video already recommended, it swaps it in.

New videos appear on YouTube every day. Your roadmap should benefit from a better explanation published last week without you having to go looking for it.

1. Nothing to do — it runs once a day for the roadmap you are working in.
2. Open a step to see videos marked New and what they replaced.
3. Choose Refresh content on a roadmap to run it yourself.

You are on “Technical SEO”. A well-reviewed new video on the same topic is published; the next morning it has replaced the weakest of your eight recommended videos, and you get a notification saying why.

Each candidate is scored on how well it covers the step, how recent it is, how established the channel is, how it has been received, its length, its language and what you have told YTLI about the channel. Duplicates of something already on the step are ignored.

• Your goal, stages, steps, their order and your progress are never changed by the refresh.
• Videos you have watched or added yourself are never replaced.
• How many roadmaps are refreshed daily depends on your plan: 1 on the free trial, 3 on Pro, all of them on Premium.

The newest videos from channels you subscribe to or follow, ranked by how well each one matches what you are learning — with the reasons shown on every video.

It answers “what should I watch today?” from sources you already trust, and “why am I seeing this?” for each one.

1. Open Knowledge Feed.
2. Read the match percentage and the reasons under it; open Why am I seeing this? for the full explanation.
3. Switch on Show only matching videos to hide everything below the threshold, and move the threshold if you want it stricter or looser.
4. Sort by best match, newest or shortest.

“82% match. Because you are learning Digital marketing → SEO → Keyword research. Fits your current roadmap stage. In your preferred learning language. Published 3 days ago.”

The match compares the video's title, description and its channel's topics with your current roadmap step, your goals and your interests. A reason is only shown when it is true for that video; when YTLI has nothing to rank against, it says “not ranked yet” instead of inventing a number.

• The threshold for “matching”.
• Whether watched videos are shown.
• Save a video, queue it to watch next, or mark it useful, not useful or not interested.
• Shorts are hidden unless you turn them on.

Your place in your learning roadmap, and videos from across the whole of YouTube for it. The top of the page shows the step you are on — what it covers, what you should be able to do after it, questions to check yourself and what comes next — and the videos below are chosen for that step, including from channels you have never heard of.

It answers “what am I learning now, and what should I watch for it?” in one place, so you do not have to search YouTube and sift through the results yourself.

1. Open For You. If you have a roadmap, your current step is at the top; choose Open the full roadmap to see every stage.
2. Read why each video was recommended.
3. Use the buttons on a video: Save for later, Watch next, Add to roadmap, Useful, Not useful, Not interested.
4. Choose Discover more for a fresh set.

Learning to bat in cricket, you see “Step 4 · Front-foot drive — By the end of this step you can: play a front-foot drive with a straight bat”, and under it a coaching video from a channel you do not follow: “91% match. Covers front-foot drive. New to you.”

With a roadmap, the AI turns your roadmap's goal, your current step and the next one into YouTube searches, then scores what comes back against them and writes the reason. Without a roadmap it uses the goals and interests in your profile. Your feedback, the channels you have marked useful, how recent a video is and your level adjust the ranking.

• Not interested and Not useful remove a video for good and make similar ones less likely.
• Useful makes that channel count for more.
• Add to roadmap puts the video on your current step.

The same matching engine sits behind the Knowledge Feed, For You, Trending, your roadmap videos and your notifications.

Because one engine does all of it, a video gets the same match everywhere, and the reasons you see are the real ones.

1. Keep your active roadmap up to date — it is the strongest signal.
2. Give feedback on videos and channels.
3. Watch inside YTLI so that what you finish is known.

You mark two videos from one channel as not useful. Its videos drop in your feeds, and its notifications are reduced to at most one a week.

Signals used: your goal, your roadmap and current stage, your level, what you have watched and finished, what you have saved, your feedback, the channels you follow, your interests, the video's topic, how recent it is, how established its channel is, and whether you have already seen it.

• Every signal that comes from you can be changed: goals, interests, feedback, followed and muted channels.

A view of the channels you subscribe to, grouped by how relevant each is to what you are learning now: highly relevant, relevant, occasionally useful, low relevance, not relevant. It also suggests channels you do not follow yet.

Most people subscribe to far more channels than help them. This shows which ones are actually serving your goal — and which new ones would.

1. Connect YouTube and choose Import subscriptions.
2. Choose Run AI analysis to have each channel described and scored.
3. Open Subscriptions to see your channels grouped by relevance, with recent useful videos from each.
4. Look at Recommended channels and follow the ones you want.

While you are on the SEO stage, a marketing channel shows “Highly relevant — 4 of its last 10 videos fit what you are learning”. When you move on to analytics, the same channel may drop to “Occasionally useful”.

The AI describes each channel in its own words — there is no fixed list of categories — and scores its learning value. Relevance is then worked out fresh each time from your current goals and the channel's recent videos, so it changes as you progress.

• Unsubscribe from a channel (this changes your real YouTube subscription).
• Mute a channel's recommendations, or reduce how often you hear about it.
• Mark a channel useful or not useful.
• Follow a recommended channel inside YTLI without subscribing on YouTube, and see why it was recommended.
• Archive a channel to hide it without unsubscribing.

A daily learning plan and alerts about new videos that fit your roadmap, delivered in the app, by email and on your phone. Every notification says why you received it.

A short daily prompt with exactly what to do next is what keeps a learning habit going.

1. Open Notifications to see your inbox and your settings.
2. Choose the time of day, the days, and your quiet hours.
3. Switch email and mobile notifications on or off separately.
4. Mark a notification useful or not useful.

“Good morning, Sam — today's learning. Your learning goal: Digital marketing. 1. Technical SEO fundamentals 2. Keyword research 3. Search intent. Estimated learning time: 35 minutes.”

The daily plan is built from your roadmap: the step you are on, the videos for it you have not watched, and anything new the refresh found. New-video alerts come from any channel — you do not need to follow it — when a video matches your current stage strongly enough.

• Turn everything off, or individual kinds of notification.
• Frequency: every day, weekdays or weekly.
• Quiet hours — nothing is emailed or pushed during them.
• Topics you do not want to hear about, and channels to mute or reduce.
• How strong a match must be before it earns an alert.
• A notification is created once: you will not get the same one twice or once per device.

Study notes written from a video's transcript — what is actually said in it: a summary, key concepts, important points, key takeaways, practical examples, terminology, action items, learning objectives, questions to test yourself, and which of your roadmap objectives it covers.

It answers “what did I learn from this video?” and gives you something to revise from without re-watching.

1. Open a video in YTLI.
2. Choose Generate AI Notes — they are also offered when you finish the video. A long video can take up to a minute.
3. Read the notes under the video. They are saved to your account and are there next time, on the web and in the app.
4. Choose Regenerate to fetch the latest transcript and write the notes again; the new notes replace the old ones. Your current notes stay on screen until the new ones are ready, and if regenerating fails they are kept.

After a 20-minute video on barre chords, the notes list the three chord shapes covered, the terms used, two practice exercises the teacher suggests, “Learning objectives: play an E-shape barre chord cleanly”, three questions to test yourself, and “Covers: play barre chords cleanly” from your roadmap.

YTLI reads the video's captions — the transcript YouTube shows when you turn CC on — and the AI writes the notes from that transcript and nothing else; nothing is filled in from the AI's memory. A long video is covered from start to finish. If a video has no captions (or only a few words, such as a music video), there is no transcript to work from, so no notes are written: YTLI tells you why, and it does not count against your daily allowance. Notes are written by AI and can contain mistakes — check anything important against the video.

• Generate or regenerate notes whenever you like, within your plan's daily allowance.
• AI Notes per day: 3 on the free trial, 30 on Pro, unlimited on Premium. Every set of notes includes three questions to test yourself; Premium notes go deeper, with more.
• Notes written before transcripts were used are labelled “Older notes”; regenerate them to have them written from the transcript.

After your notes, YTLI asks whether you would like a suggestion for what to learn next, and offers six directions: Continue, Go deeper, Learn prerequisites, Practice, Review, Next roadmap topic.

It answers “what should I learn after this?” so that finishing a video leads somewhere.

1. Finish a video and open its notes.
2. Pick one of the six directions.
3. Choose one of the suggested videos, or pick another direction.

You finish a video on keyword research and choose Next roadmap topic: “Next in Digital marketing is Search intent”, with the videos matched to that step.

Your roadmap is consulted first — the rest of the step, the next step, the step before. Only when the roadmap has nothing in the direction you chose does YTLI look further, and it tells you when it could not find anything good.

• Which direction to go in.
• You can ignore the suggestion; nothing is added to your roadmap unless you add it.

Your account, your plan, your learning summary, your video language and your learning interests.

It is where you check and correct what YTLI believes about you.

1. Open My Profile.
2. Review your interests, language and plan.
3. Change anything that is wrong.

Your profile shows “Trial — 9 days left”, English and Spanish as lesson languages, and an interest tree with Language learning at the top.

The AI writes a short description of you as a learner from your goals and activity. It is a description, not a setting: nothing depends on it.

• Skills, goals, language and interests.
• Disconnect YouTube, or delete your account and everything in it, from My Profile on the web or Settings in the mobile app.

A tree of what you are interested in, from broad to specific: domain → category → sub-category → topic → skill. It is built from your roadmaps, what you watch and what you add yourself.

Your interests steer the Knowledge Feed and For You. Seeing them as a tree shows you exactly what YTLI thinks you want — and lets you fix it.

1. Open My Profile → Learning Interests.
2. Choose Add interest and type anything. YTLI places it in the tree for you.
3. Open an interest to see why it is there, change its importance, or mark it a priority.
4. Choose Build from my activity to have the tree rebuilt from your roadmaps and viewing.

Business → Digital marketing → SEO, with “From your roadmap ‘Digital marketing for my business’” as the reason, and a separate Music → Guitar branch you added by hand.

There are no preset topics. When you add an interest the AI works out where it belongs; when you rebuild, it organises the signals it has and records which signal each interest came from.

• Add, rename and remove interests.
• Raise or lower an interest's importance, or mark it a priority.
• Interests you add or edit are never changed by a rebuild.

Search by meaning across videos YTLI knows about. It is temporarily switched off while it is improved.

When it returns it will let you find a video by what it is about rather than by its exact title.

1. Search is not available at the moment.
2. Use For You, Trending or your roadmap's Find videos to discover videos in the meantime.

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Search compares the meaning of your question with the meaning of each video. It is off; nothing runs.

• Nothing to control while it is switched off.

A switch that keeps YouTube Shorts out of your learning. It is off by default — Shorts are hidden.

Shorts are rarely lessons. Hiding them keeps your feed to videos long enough to teach something.

1. On the Dashboard (web) or in Profile → Learning profile (mobile), set Shorts to ON or OFF.
2. The change applies at once to the Knowledge Feed, For You and Trending.

With Shorts OFF, a 45-second clip and a two-minute vertical video from a channel you follow do not appear in your feed; the same channel's 12-minute lesson does.

No AI is involved. A video counts as a Short when it is three minutes or less and is filmed vertically, or is under a minute, or is tagged #shorts. If YTLI does not yet know a short video's shape, it is treated as a Short and left out until that is known.

• Shorts ON or OFF. The setting is saved to your account, so it is the same on web and mobile.
• Roadmap steps never contain Shorts, whichever way the switch is set.
• Focus Mode also hides Shorts.

YTLI has three tiers. Everyone starts with a free trial that lasts 7 days. After that, continuing needs Pro or Premium.

You can try everything that matters before paying, and you always know which state your account is in.

1. Open Pricing or Upgrade to compare the tiers.
2. Your profile and the Upgrade page show your state: Trial active, Trial ending soon, Trial expired, Subscription active or Subscription expired.
3. Choose Pro or Premium to subscribe. On mobile this goes through the App Store or Google Play.

Day 5 of the trial: a banner says “Your free trial ends in 2 days”. Day 8 without a subscription: the learning features ask you to choose a plan; your roadmaps, notes and progress are kept.

No AI is involved in pricing.

• Free trial (7 days): 1 learning roadmap (archived roadmaps count towards it), 3 AI Notes a day, 20 AI Mentor messages a day, all of your YouTube subscriptions imported.
• Pro: unlimited roadmaps and mentor conversations, 30 AI Notes a day, all subscriptions, daily refresh for 3 roadmaps, new-video alerts and channel recommendations.
• Premium: everything in Pro, unlimited AI Notes written in more depth with more self-test questions, daily refresh for every roadmap, priority AI processing and report export.
• Cancel at any time; you keep access until the end of the period you paid for.
• The limits are enforced by the server, so they are the same on web and mobile.

YTLI for Android and iPhone, with the same features as the website: roadmaps, the Knowledge Feed, For You, channels, notifications, AI Notes, your profile and your plan.

Learning happens in spare moments. The app lets you pick up exactly where you left off on the web.

1. Install the app and sign in with the same Google account.
2. Use the five tabs: Home, Learn, YouTube, AI and Profile.
3. Allow notifications when asked if you want the daily plan on your phone.

You create a roadmap on your laptop in the evening and watch the first video on your phone the next morning; the step shows as in progress on both.

The app does no matching of its own. Every recommendation, match and note comes from the same service the website uses, so the two always agree.

• Notification permission, theme, and everything you can control on the web.
• With no connection, the app tells you it is offline rather than showing stale results as current.

YTLI in your browser at aiyoutubemanager.com, with a sidebar for every feature.

A larger screen suits planning a roadmap, reading notes and managing channels.

1. Sign in with Google.
2. Use the sidebar to move between features; it collapses on small screens.
3. Open User Guide from the sidebar at any time.

On a phone-sized browser window the sidebar becomes a menu button and every page fits the screen without sideways scrolling.

The same as the mobile app: the website shows what the YTLI service decides.

• Light, dark or system theme.
• Everything described in this guide.

The settings that change how YTLI behaves for you: video language, Shorts, Focus Mode, weekly goals and notifications.

They let you fit YTLI to how you learn instead of the other way round.

1. Video language: My Profile → Video language. Pick your main language and any others you are happy to learn in.
2. Shorts and Focus Mode: the Dashboard on web, Learning profile on mobile.
3. Weekly goals: the Dashboard.
4. Notifications: the Notifications page.

You set Spanish as your main language and English as an extra. Recommendations in other languages stop appearing.

The mentor may offer to include another language when it finds good videos in one you have not chosen. It asks first and waits for your answer.

• YTLI never guesses your language from where you are.
• All preferences are stored on your account and apply on every device.

What YTLI keeps about you, and how to remove it.

You should know what an app that connects to your YouTube account holds, and be able to take it back.

1. Disconnect YouTube at any time from My Profile (web) or the YouTube tab (mobile).
2. Stop emails from the link at the bottom of any learning email, or in Notifications.
3. Delete your account from My Profile (web) or Settings (mobile). You are asked to confirm, and it cannot be undone.

You disconnect YouTube. Your imported subscription list and everything derived from it is deleted within days; your roadmaps and notes, which do not come from YouTube, stay.

Your goals and the titles of videos are sent to the AI service to produce roadmaps, matches and notes. They are not used to train it.

• YTLI can only see what you watch inside YTLI — YouTube does not share your viewing history with any app.
• YTLI cannot change your real YouTube notification bells; its notification settings are its own.
• Unsubscribing from a channel in YTLI does change your real YouTube subscription, and asks you first.
• Deleting your account removes your roadmaps, notes, history, interests and settings.