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. Full screen uses the same light or dark appearance as the rest of the app.
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 held upright there is no tab row. The feeds are in the ⋯ menu at the end of the row under the video, under Feed, next to Sort and Feed actions. When you are reading any feed but the public one, the Receipts pill names it, as in Receipts · Private.
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, once you have some.
- Featured: a hand-picked rotating spotlight.
- Popular now: videos to discover. Connecting YouTube tunes it to your subscriptions.
- Loved and History: the videos you've loved and the ones you've watched.
- Playlists and Your Videos: your YouTube playlists and uploads, after you connect.
On a computer, a Videos heading leads the row of tabs, starting with Popular now, and your videos sit below it. When you have friends (people you follow who follow you back), a Friends row of them sits above your videos, and a short Jump to list beside the two takes you straight to either one. The one you're reading is marked with a bar and bolder text.
On a phone, Home's sections are the chips across the top: Discover, then Friends once you have friends, then Profile while the setup checklist is on your home screen.
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 rest of the row is Receipts, Queue when you have one, Comments and Watch Along. Comments holds every conversation on the video, one card for each receipt with comments (more about the Comments panel).
The panel names share one row with the playback controls, right under the video's timeline: Play and the time on the left, the panel names in the middle, then an arrow and ⋯ on the right. ⋯ holds everything else that used to sit around them. Under Playback are Enter fullscreen, the previous and next video when you have a queue, and Watchers while Watch Along is on. Under Feed are your feeds, opening or creating one, Sort and Feed actions, and Share comes last.
The arrow lifts the panels up over the video when you want the whole screen for reading. The video pauses while they cover it, and the timeline moves to the top of the panels. Closing them with the arrow again leaves the video paused. While the panels are up, Play reads Collapse and resume: it drops them and starts the video where it stopped. A receipt's timestamp does the same from that receipt's moment, so the video jumps there and plays. Share and full screen from ⋯ drop the panels first.
Interactive demo: move between the panels, pick a feed or a sort from ⋯, or use the arrow to lift the panels over the video
The row steps aside while you scroll down a list, so more of what you are reading fits on the screen. Scroll back up to bring it back, or tap the small handle it leaves behind. It stays put while you are only watching, since it carries Play.
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.
Dashboard opens onto a row of sections, in this order: Receipts, Watch Along, Playlists, Library, Feeds, and Creator Hub if you have it. Receipts leads because it's your own work, and it opens on Mine, with Saved and Tagged beside it.
Watch Along holds the parties you have booked or been asked to, and the ones that are over. Invitations is the ones waiting on your answer, with Accept and Decline on each. Coming up is what you're hosting and what you said yes to, soonest first, each with one way in: the party's page, its waiting room, or the party itself once it's running.
Once you're signed in, those same destinations, Home, Dashboard, Profile and Settings, sit along the bottom of the screen on your home screen, on Trending and on every page of this help center. 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.
Dashboard is a row of sections you can swipe between, in this order: Receipts, Watch Along, Playlists, Library, Feeds, and Creator Hub if you have it. Receipts leads because it's your own work, and it opens on Mine, with Saved and Tagged beside it. Watch Along stacks its cards one to a row with their buttons under the text. Booking a party covers what it holds.
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.
The setup checklist
While your profile is still unfinished, a Finish setting up your profile panel sits at the top of your home screen: on a computer it's a column beside the shelves, and on a phone it's one of the panels you swipe to. Its header has two controls.
- Collapse folds it down to a single line with the progress bar still on it, and leaves it that way until you open it again. This is the one to reach for, and it's remembered per account, so folding it away on your own account doesn't fold it away on another.
- Hide takes it off your home screen. The panel is replaced in place by a line that says so with an Undo next to it, and Undo puts the checklist straight back. If you walk away instead, it stays hidden.
Hidden isn't gone. Finish your profile in your account menu brings it back, and so does Show this on my home screen in Settings, under Profile. Once you reach 100% the panel retires on its own and the ways back stop being offered, because there's nothing left to finish.
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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