Find your way around the app
A tour of the Vid Receipts interface, video player, receipt feed, feed tabs, working tray, and discovery shelves, on a computer and on a phone.
Find your way around the app
Here's a quick tour of the Vid Receipts interface.
Video URL bar
At the very top of the app, you'll find the video URL bar. Paste any YouTube video link here and press enter to load it. This is your starting point for adding receipts to any video.
Paste a YouTube link:
Paste a video or playlist link, the Watch button lights up once it's a valid YouTube URL.
Video player
Once a video is loaded, it appears in the video player area. You can play, pause, and scrub through the video just like you would on YouTube. The player stays put while you read: on a computer the page itself doesn't scroll, the receipt feed does.
Receipt feed
Below the video player, you'll see the receipt feed: a scrollable list of all the receipts (annotations) on the current video. Each receipt shows the author, timestamp, and content. Click on any receipt's timestamp to jump to that moment in the video.
Shared receipts visible to everyone watching this video.
Click a tab to switch - each feed type keeps your receipts organized
At this timestamp, the speaker makes a key point about data privacy that contradicts their earlier statement at 1:15. Worth comparing both moments.
Interactive demo, react, vote, or open the comments
Feed tabs
Use the feed tabs to switch between different views:
- Public: Receipts shared by the community. Visible to everyone.
- Private: Your personal receipts. Only you can see these.
- Drafts: Finished receipts you've saved for later publishing.
- Custom Feeds: Curated feeds created by you or others. Great for organizing receipts around specific topics or groups.
On a phone the tab row is chrome like the row of panel names above it, and the two travel together: scroll down the list and both step aside, scroll back up and both return. Reaching them with a keyboard, or pulling down on the small handle above the list, brings them back as well. A menu you have open from either row keeps that row in place until you close it.
Discovery shelves
The dashboard surfaces several shelves of videos so you always have something to receipt:
- Recent: videos you've recently watched on Vid Receipts.
- Featured: a hand-picked rotating spotlight.
- For You: a personalized shelf, much richer once you connect YouTube.
- Subscriptions / Playlists / Liked: three more tabs that light up after you connect.
Each shelf scrolls horizontally. On desktop you can:
- Mouse wheel: hover the shelf and scroll, the shelf advances one tile at a time.
- Trackpad: two-finger swipe sideways (or up/down), the shelf snaps in the direction of the swipe.
- Drag: click-and-drag works as well, with momentum.
The Surprise me button (shuffle icon ⇄ next to the URL bar) picks a random featured video for you when you can't decide. On a video page it shares a small pill with the heart, so loving what the shuffle found is one tap away. With the phone turned sideways the pill moves into the bar above the video, beside the Back control, so you can keep drawing without leaving the video.
Working tray
The Working Tray is your active workspace for receipts you're currently writing. It's different from the Drafts feed:
- Working Tray: Receipts you're actively editing right now. They live in the tray until you save them to a feed.
- Drafts feed: Finished receipts that you've explicitly saved as drafts for later publishing.
The tray is a column between the video player and the receipt feed. It appears when you start a receipt and stays there while you write, so the video, your draft and the feed are all on screen at once.
The tray is one of the panels under the video, labeled Tray. Swipe across to it or tap its pill in the row of panel names. It only joins that row once you have something in progress, so tap Add Receipt first.
The row of panel names steps aside while you scroll down a list, so more of what you are reading fits on the screen, and it slips away on its own after about six seconds of stillness. Scroll back up to bring it back, or tap the small handle it leaves behind.
Starting a receipt opens the editor across the whole screen: toolbar, text, timestamp and the post controls, with the cursor already in the text. The video pauses while the editor is up, and it stays paused once you close it, so nothing starts playing at you unexpectedly. Press play to pick the video back up. Tap Collapse to tray to drop the editor back into the panel and see the video while you write; Expand in the panel takes it full screen again.
Add Receipt button
The Add Receipt button is your go-to for creating new annotations. Click it to open the editor, write your receipt, and save it to the feed of your choice.
Your stack
Your Stack is your personal collection, a place where all your receipts live. Think of it as your profile's library. You can review, edit, or manage all the receipts you've created from here.
Moving between screens
Your home screen carries a rail down its left side with the top-level destinations on it: Home, Dashboard, Profile and Settings. The one you're on is marked, and you can collapse the rail to icons when you want the width back.
Once you're signed in, those same destinations, Home, Dashboard, Profile and Settings, sit along the bottom of the screen on the two browsing screens: your home screen and Trending. They're links, so a long press previews them and the browser's own Back works normally. The one you're actually on carries a short bar above its icon and a bolder label, not just a color, and it's announced as the current page.
The bar knows where you are from the address bar rather than from what you last tapped, so arriving through a shared link highlights the right destination. Coming to Home from Trending leaves Trending in your history, so Back returns you there; switching between the tabs once you're on Home doesn't pile up entries to unwind.
Everywhere else, including the video page, the bottom edge belongs to the page itself. On a video, holding the phone upright keeps the Vid Receipts logo in the top bar, and tapping it takes you to your home screen. The browser's own Back still takes you where you came from.
Settings
Click the gear icon to access your settings. From here, you can:
- Manage your account details
- Create and switch between personas
- Connect your YouTube account
- Adjust your preferences
Guided tour
First time using the app? Vid Receipts may offer a quick interactive tour when you first sign in. It walks you through the main features step by step, so you can feel right at home.
Head back to Getting started if you need a refresher, or browse the help center for more.
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