Never nod along to a joke you didn't get
ever again

Late-night monologues, panel shows, stand-up clips, podcasts: half the laughs lean on a reference, a pun, or something that happened last week. The extension spots those moments and tells you what's going on, in a card beside the video, without you leaving the page.

The extension on a YouTube video: an explanation card on the left, the list of jokes on the right, markers on the progress bar

Reads the captions, not your screen

It works on any YouTube video that has captions, human-made or auto-generated. The caption text is sent to our server, analysed once, and shared by everyone who watches the same video. Nothing is recorded from your screen or microphone.

Explains only when you ask

By default a small Explain the joke to me button appears for a few seconds right after a punchline lands. Click it if you missed the joke, ignore it if you didn't. Prefer everything spelled out? Switch to Auto mode and the explanation pops up by itself.

Replay, rate, report

Every explanation comes with Wait, what? to replay the joke, Good one to see how many people laughed with you, and Bad one to tell us the joke was offensive, wasn't a joke, or was explained badly. Your feedback trains what we show next.

Coming soon: your sense of humour, mapped

Every Good one builds a picture of what makes you laugh. We're working on a personal humour profile across platforms, a yearly "the ten funniest things you watched", and a replay button for the days you need it.

How to install

The extension isn't on the Chrome Web Store yet, so it's loaded by hand. It takes about a minute.

  1. Download the zip above and unzip it somewhere you'll keep it, for example a Chrome extensions folder in your Documents. Chrome loads the extension from that folder every time it starts, so don't delete it afterwards.
  2. In Chrome, click Window menu and select Extensions, or open chrome://extensions, and switch on Developer mode in the top-right corner.
  3. Click Load unpacked and choose the unzipped explain-the-joke-0.2.2 folder.
  4. Open any YouTube video that has captions. Look for the 😂 in the top-right corner of the player: hover it to see the status, click it for the full list of jokes. Click the extension's icon in Chrome's toolbar to change the mode, the language of the explanations, and other settings.
This is a test build. It's free to use while we try it out, but the service behind it may be paused, changed or shut down at any time without notice, and an update may require you to download and load the extension again. If the 😂 says "Backend unreachable", that's us, not you.

Download the beta

Free, no sign-up, no account. Works on Chrome and other Chromium browsers that support extensions.

Version 0.2.2 release 20261028 · YouTube only for now · needs captions on the video · the extension stores a random anonymous id to count your reactions once, and nothing else about you.