Glasp: What it is and how to use it

Index

Glasp, what is it?

Glasp is a platform (browser extension) that acts as a social highlighter for web pages, PDFs, and online videos.

It allows you to highlight text and take notes without leaving the page, and to get automatic summaries thanks to AI. One of its distinctive features is the social component: users can publicly share their highlights and discover those of others, creating a collaborative learning experience. Below, we take a detailed look at Glasp and how to use it effectively.

Features

The main features include:

  • Highlighting on web, PDF, and video: Glasp lets you highlight text directly on any web page or PDF open in the browser. Simply select a sentence with your mouse, and it’s saved as a highlight. You can use different colors for highlights and also add a personal note to each one. Besides text, Glasp supports multimedia content: you can highlight YouTube video transcripts (with automatic timestamp) and import Kindle highlights from your ebooks, expanding the sources from which you can easily collect notes.
  • Organizing notes and highlights: All highlighted content is gathered in your personal profile (“My Highlights”). There, Glasp organizes them by article and lets you add custom tags or labels with the author’s name, so you can filter and search later by topics or authors. A control panel also shows stats like the number of pages read, the count of highlights made, and a calendar with your daily streak. This helps track reading progress and encourages the daily habit of highlighting. You can also add a general comment for an entire highlighted page (like a final summary note).
  • Sharing and community: Glasp is designed for knowledge sharing. By default, highlights are public and visible to other users on the platform. Each user has a public profile listing the pages they’ve highlighted, which others can visit. You can follow other users to see their highlights in your feed, similar to a reading-focused social network. There’s also a “Insightful” reaction button to mark a highlight from someone else as helpful, and a “Save” feature to store others’ highlights among your favorites. Through the Explore section, you can discover popular content by tag or author. In short, Glasp builds a community where everyone learns publicly, leaving “footprints” of knowledge for others to follow. (For those who prefer privacy, you can keep your highlights private if you switch to a paid plan—see the Costs section.)
  • AI-generated summaries: A key feature is the integrated AI for summarization. Glasp can automatically generate a personalized summary of an article or PDF based on the highlighted parts. In practice, after highlighting key points, one click provides a compiled overview that brings out the “insights” or main concepts of the text. This AI (based on models similar to ChatGPT) helps quickly understand lengthy or complex documents. Glasp also integrates AI for videos: it opens a window with the YouTube video transcript and allows you to copy it and send it to ChatGPT for a summary. Plus, there’s a “Chat with your highlights” feature, a sort of personal chatbot (AI clone) trained on your own highlights: as you accumulate notes, the AI learns from the saved content and can answer questions or offer personalized recommendations, like an assistant who knows your references. Furthermore, Glasp provides audio transcription tools with summaries (useful for podcasts or recorded lectures) and creates QuoteShots, i.e., images containing a highlighted quote—handy for sharing on social media.
  • Integrations and exporting: Glasp fits into your productivity workflow by integrating with other tools. You can export all highlights and notes in multiple formats (plain text, Markdown, CSV, HTML), or sync them directly with note-taking apps like Notion, Roam Research, or Obsidian. For example, with a single click you can copy all the highlights from an article and paste them into Obsidian. Pro users can also set up daily automatic exporting to Notion. Finally, Glasp enables quick sharing on external platforms: you can share a public link to your notes or post highlighted sentences on Twitter, Slack, LinkedIn, etc. A mobile app (e.g., iOS) is available for consulting and sharing highlights on the go, though actual highlighting primarily happens via the desktop extension.

Usage methods

Below is a step-by-step guide to installing Glasp and using it effectively:

  • Extension installation: Glasp works as a browser extension. It’s available for Chrome (and compatible browsers like Edge, Brave, Opera) and for Safari. Currently, there’s no official add-on for Firefox. To install it on Chrome, visit the Chrome Web Store and click “Add to Chrome.” Then confirm with “Add extension” in the pop-up window. The extension will be downloaded and automatically added to your browser. On Safari, it’s available through the macOS App Store as an extension (simply search “Glasp” and install it similarly).
  • Sign up and login: After installation, click the Glasp icon in the browser’s extension bar. The onboarding page will open: select “Sign up.” Glasp currently uses Google for login, so press “Continue with Google” and choose your Gmail account to register. No additional password is required since it relies on Google for authentication. After your first login, you’ll be taken to Glasp’s welcome page.
  • Initial setup: Once registered, Glasp may ask you to customize some parameters. Specifically, you can select your favorite topics (around 10) from a suggested list. This helps personalize your social feed on Glasp (you’ll see highlights from other users on those interests). You might pick topics like Technology, Marketing, Science, Literature, etc. to get more targeted suggestions. This setup is optional and can be changed later in your profile.
  • Pinning the icon: For convenience, it’s best to pin Glasp’s icon among the visible extensions. In Chrome, click the puzzle-shaped icon (Extensions management) at the top right, then the 📌 next to “Glasp – Web Highlighter.” The Glasp icon will remain on the browser bar for quick access. On Safari, the icon should appear directly in the toolbar once the extension is enabled in preferences.
  • Highlighting content: Now you’re ready to highlight. Visit a web page or open a PDF in your browser. If it’s a local PDF, Chrome will display it in its built-in viewer and Glasp will work there; in Safari, you need to open the PDF via a URL or use Glasp’s upload function for local files. To highlight, select the desired portion of text with your mouse (you can drag over a sentence or an entire paragraph). As soon as you release the mouse, a small Glasp popup appears near the selected text, offering a set of colors. Click your preferred color (yellow, green, pink, blue, etc.): the text is highlighted in that color and saved to your Glasp account. You can repeat this for all the important parts of the article. If you want to add a note to a specific highlight, hover over the highlighted text: in the Glasp popup, there’s a speech bubble icon where you can add a comment/note to that highlight—for instance, your thoughts or an explanation.
  • Removing or editing highlights: If you highlighted something by mistake, you can remove it easily. Click the unwanted highlighted text, and in the Glasp popup, click the “X” (close) to delete that highlight. Similarly, you can change the color by reselecting and choosing a different color, or edit the associated note by clicking the notes icon. These actions help keep your notes clean and organized.
  • Reviewing saved highlights: Every highlight you make is saved to your Glasp profile in real time. To see them, click the Glasp icon and select “My Highlights” (or go to glasp.co and log into your profile). You’ll see a list of recently highlighted pages/articles (under Articles), each with the number of highlights. Clicking an article title shows all the highlights and notes for that page in an ordered list. There, you can: add tags (click “Add tag” and type the keyword, e.g., #AI or #Marketing, then press Enter), copy all highlights (📋 Copy Highlights to get all quoted text at once), and add a general comment (“Thoughts and Comments” field at the top) summarizing the article or your impressions, then press Save. You can also delete an entire page from your highlights (click “⋮” > Delete page) if you no longer need it, or delete individual highlights (click “⋮” next to each note > Delete).
  • Summarizing an article with AI: Once you’ve highlighted an article, Glasp can provide an AI summary of the key points. From the My Highlights page, select the desired article and click “View AI Summary.” A new window or section will open with the AI-generated summary based on your highlights. You can read this summary to quickly review the main ideas. If you want, you can also copy and share it. For YouTube videos, the process is similar: open a YouTube video with the extension active—a “Transcript & Summary” sidebar will appear. By clicking View AI Summary, Glasp will open ChatGPT with a prepared prompt containing the transcript, ready to generate a video summary (obviously requires a ChatGPT account). Thus, you get the key points of the video in seconds.
  • Sharing and exporting: Glasp makes sharing your notes easy. On your highlights page, click “Share” (the share icon) to get a public link to the set of highlights for a particular article. Anyone (even non-Glasp users) can view the highlights with that link. Also, from the share menu you can export the highlights: choose a format among CSV, HTML, Markdown (.md), or plain text (.txt), and it will download a file with all the quotes and notes for that article. Another useful option is “Download Highlight Images”: Glasp will generate images (QuoteShots) containing the highlighted sentences, ready to insert into presentations or post on social media. Finally, if you’ve connected integrations like Notion, you can enable daily syncing: highlights are added every day to your chosen Notion page automatically.

Tip: to get the most out of Glasp, it’s helpful to assign consistent tags to notes (making them easier to find), and spend a few minutes periodically reviewing saved highlights. Glasp also sends “Daily Review” emails for your highlights (especially those imported from Kindle) to help you revisit what you’ve underlined. Moreover, explore the Explore section to find other users reading similar topics and discover interesting articles through their highlights—it’s an excellent way to broaden your knowledge sources.

Costs and plans (free vs premium)

Glasp offers both a free version and premium subscription options for advanced users. Here are the available plans:

  • Free: includes all basic highlighting features on web/PDF, unlimited public highlights, and limited AI capabilities. Specifically, the free plan allows up to 3 daily YouTube AI summaries (Basic YouTube Summaries) and about 5 PDF uploads for summarization. It also offers about 30 minutes of monthly audio transcription (useful for audio/video files). The free version does not let you keep your notes private (everything is publicly visible on your profile) nor includes advanced YouTube summaries or automated export. No payment or credit card is required to use the free plan, so Glasp can be tried with no cost.
  • Pro – Premium: designed for single users who want full functionality. It costs around $12/month with monthly billing, or about $9–$10/month on annual billing (~$120/year)—around €10 monthly. It unlocks unlimited private highlights (i.e., the option to keep your highlights visible only to yourself) and removes AI feature limits: with Pro, you get unlimited advanced YouTube summaries (up to 1000 videos/month), plus around 100 PDF uploads per month. It also includes daily sync to Notion. Essentially, the Pro plan removes nearly all restrictions for individual heavy use.
  • Unlimited – Enterprise: a more expensive plan (~$25/month or ~$300/year) aimed at teams or power users. It includes everything in Pro without quantitative limits: unlimited AI summaries (up to 5000 videos/month on YouTube, unlimited PDF uploads, 1500 minutes/month of YouTube transcriptions), plus priority support from the Glasp staff. This plan is suitable for organizations, researchers, or anyone who highlights an enormous volume of content and needs extended collaboration. Note that this Unlimited plan is quite costly and likely overkill for most single users, as the Pro plan already covers individual needs.

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages

  • Ease of use and speed: the interface is simple and immediate. You highlight pages with a single click, without copying/pasting text anywhere else. This streamlined workflow—complete with a sidebar that immediately shows all highlights of the current article—is praised by users for making note-taking much faster and more efficient.
  • Improves comprehension and memory: actively highlighting what you read helps you focus. Many users note that they read more carefully with Glasp (instead of just scrolling) and retain far more information, thanks to being able to easily revisit key sections later. Essentially, the act of highlighting serves as an instant review that better cements concepts.
  • Community and shared learning: Glasp’s social aspect is a major benefit for those who love finding new content. You can “learn in public” by seeing what others consider important in a given article. You can follow like-minded users and see their highlights in your feed, creating a continuous knowledge exchange. This often leads to discovering high-quality articles you might otherwise miss and seeing different perspectives on common topics. The Glasp community is described as a daily source of inspiration that enriches the learning experience.
  • AI integrations: Glasp doesn’t “lock” you into its ecosystem—rather, it always lets you export notes in standard formats (Markdown, CSV, text). This is a huge plus regarding data ownership: you can keep personal backups or move your highlights into other apps (Notion, Obsidian, Evernote…) seamlessly. Also, direct integrations with third-party apps and the ability to share public links make Glasp a flexible tool that adapts to various workflows.
  • Cross-platform and continuity: the extension works on multiple browsers (Chrome, Safari, Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi), and data is synced in the cloud. This means you can start highlighting at work and then find the same notes at home on your personal laptop, simply by logging in. Also, with over 1 million active users, the product is mature and supported by a large community, so there’s less risk of the developers abandoning it.

Disadvantages

  • Limited privacy in the free version: Glasp’s “social” model means that, by default, your highlights are public (visible to anyone on your profile). This can be an issue if you’re annotating sensitive content or just prefer to keep your work private. You need the paid Pro plan to have unlimited private highlights. Some see the lack of a free privacy option as a significant drawback.
  • Dependence on an online platform: Glasp requires an extension plus internet connectivity. If the platform experiences downtime, access to your notes may be temporarily limited. While highlights are stored locally and synchronized when possible, there’s no full offline mode. Also, the extension isn’t available for Firefox—an omission for users of that browser (though you can use a compatible alternative specifically for Glasp).
  • Free plan limitations: Although generous, Glasp’s free plan has quantitative restrictions. For example, a maximum of 5 uploaded PDFs, 3 AI YouTube summaries per day, and 30 monthly minutes of transcription. Power users might quickly hit these caps. In such cases, you’ll need a Pro subscription to continue using the service at full capacity. Even the number of highlighter colors in the free version is limited (4 standard colors)—no custom color selection or folder organization as offered by some competitors, unless using external services or a paid plan.
  • A relatively new ecosystem: Glasp started in 2021, so it’s young and evolving. This means some features may change quickly or that the app could have minor bugs/shortcomings as it improves. For example, currently the only registration method is via a Google account—those who don’t want or can’t use Google OAuth have no alternative login (no email+password yet). Also, while the social component is helpful for many, it may not appeal to everyone—some only want personal highlighting and find the social feed and notifications distracting.

In short, Glasp’s advantages are quite substantial for those seeking productivity and collaborative learning, but it isn’t perfect for every scenario. Those who prioritize complete privacy or offline usage may need to consider alternatives that better meet those requirements.

Security and privacy handling

When adopting a tool like Glasp, it’s important to consider how personal data is managed and the security of highlighted information. Here are some points about security and privacy in Glasp:

  • Data storage All highlights and notes made through Glasp are stored on Glasp’s cloud servers tied to your account. This enables cross-device sync and web access to your profile. On the flip side, it means you’re entrusting this data to an external service. The good news is that Glasp allows you to export all your data (highlights and notes) at any time, giving you the ability to create local backups or move the information elsewhere. Also, if you decide to close your account, you should be able to permanently delete your data from their servers (their Privacy Policy describes procedures for removal upon request).
  • Content visibility As mentioned, by default notes on Glasp are public (on the free plan). This means anyone who knows your profile URL or a specific highlight link can see that content. On one hand, Glasp doesn’t actively promote or feature user profiles (it’s unlikely someone will find your notes if you don’t share them or don’t use your real name), but you should still keep in mind that your highlights are accessible. If you need confidentiality, the solution is the Pro plan, which allows for private highlights (visible only to you). Alternatively, if you want to remain on the free plan, you can simply avoid using Glasp for sensitive or personal content. Note that Kindle-imported notes are set to private by default and not publicly shared, presumably to respect the more personal nature of those annotations.
  • Extension permissions and technical security: Glasp’s browser extension requires permission to read and modify data on visited websites. That’s normal for this type of tool (it’s needed to apply the highlight layer on pages). However, it implies that the extension can potentially see the content you browse. In its policy, Glasp states it collects usage data to improve the service, prevent abuse, and ensure security, but does not sell note content to third parties for marketing without consent. So far, there have been no reported security breaches related to Glasp nor any public data leaks. The company behind Glasp (based in the U.S.) claims to comply with data protection regulations (e.g. GDPR for European users) and says it implements proper security measures. Specifically, EU users have the right to request access, correction, or deletion of personal data under the GDPR. Such requests can be made via email to the Glasp team (acting as the Data Controller).
  • Platform reliability: Since Glasp is a cloud service, it depends on the company’s continued operation. Currently, the project is supported by a substantial user base and presumably investors (not disclosed publicly). The team provides constant updates with new features (indicating ongoing development). ScamAdviser and other web reputation sites rate glasp.co as legitimate and reliable, with high security scores (e.g., 100/100 on ScamAdvisor) and valid HTTPS. Of course, as with any online service, there’s always a residual risk related to longevity: if the service shuts down, the user should remember to export their data. Another point: Glasp relies on Google sign-in, so the security of your Glasp account also depends on the security of your Google Account (it’s recommended to use two-factor authentication on Google, for instance, to protect access).

In conclusion, Glasp adopts standard security measures and privacy transparency comparable to other cloud services. Data is protected by encrypted connections and subject to confidentiality policies; you retain control of your information through exports and (in paid plans) privacy settings. It’s always wise to use common sense: avoid highlighting highly sensitive content on a public platform and use the provided options (like private highlights or exports) to best manage your information. So far, Glasp’s reputation for security is positive, and there’s no indication of reliability issues that would discourage its use—in fact, with due precautions, Glasp can be considered a safe and reliable tool to enhance your learning process.