Sada العربية Start practising

Shadow any YouTube video, in your browser

Most YouTube shadowing tools are desktop Chrome extensions. Sada is a website: it works on your phone as well as your computer, needs no extension or account, and scores your voice on your own device.

How to shadow a YouTube video with Sada

  1. Copy the link of any YouTube video that has captions.
  2. Open your Sada library and paste it. The video is split into lines from its captions.
  3. Pick a line. Press play to hear it, or loop it.
  4. Press Record. In Shadow mode the line plays while you speak; in Repeat mode you speak after it.
  5. A few seconds later you see your score: words matched, words missed, and your timing against the speaker.
  6. Open Compare to play your take side by side with the original, or your first try against your latest.

Good videos to start with

Steve Jobs — Stanford Commencement Address15 min · clear, steady speech Tim Urban — Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator14 min · funny, natural pace Ken Robinson — Do Schools Kill Creativity?20 min · British English Amy Cuddy — Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are21 min · American English

No captions on your video?

Open the video on YouTube, choose …more then Show transcript, copy the whole transcript with its times, and paste it into Sada. It becomes practice lines just like captions.

New to shadowing? Read how the technique works.

Questions people ask

Do I need a Chrome extension?

No. Sada is a website, so it works in any modern browser, including on phones.

Is there a YouTube shadowing app for iPhone or Android?

Sada works in Safari on iPhone and Chrome on Android without installing anything. You can add it to your home screen from the browser’s share menu.

Start practising

Start practising