Can Copilot Watch YouTube Videos? Edge Sidebar vs the Copilot App (2026)

Microsoft's Copilot in Edge page lists "Summarize YouTube videos": "get a quick summary, key takeaways and answers to your questions".

1. Open the video on youtube.com in Microsoft Edge and sign in to Copilot.
2. Click the Copilot icon at the top right of the window to open the sidebar.
3. Ask for a summary, the key points, or a question about the video.

Microsoft does not say what Copilot reads to do this (captions, audio or frames), which videos it fails on, or which regions have it; the page only says availability "may vary by device type, market, and browser version."

We found no Microsoft page saying the Copilot app or copilot.com can read a YouTube link. If you paste one and the answer looks like it comes from the title rather than what was said, that is the sign. The fix is the same as for ChatGPT and Claude: give it the words.

1. Paste the video link into our transcript generator and click Copy.
2. Paste it into Copilot with your request, for example "Summarize this in five bullet points".

This works in any browser and in the Copilot app, gives you exact wording to check against, and the same text works elsewhere. How other assistants handle YouTube: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity. Developers using GitHub Copilot in VS Code can add our MCP server instead: VS Code setup.