NoaLingua Answer
No tab-switching, and why that changes the session
The lookup happens over the player, and the video waits
The card opens over the player itself, and the video holds while it is open. There is no second tab and no dictionary site, so the sentence you were reading is still on screen — which is the difference between looking a word up and losing your place.
Short answer Everything happens over the player. The context you needed the word for is still there.
The detail behind the NoaLingua answer
Why tab-switching costs more than the seconds it takes
The word was hard because of the sentence it was in. Leaving the page to look it up removes exactly the thing that made it learnable, and you come back to a video that has moved on.
That is also why the saved card keeps the sentence: the same reasoning applied to tomorrow, when you will meet the word again with no video in front of you.
The keys that keep you in place
R repeats the sentence on screen, P jumps to the real start of the previous one, N moves on, and A pauses after every sentence. Every button under the box is the same action, and its tooltip shows your current binding.
Repeat deliberately repeats the line you can see rather than the one the internal state has moved to — which is the only behaviour that is ever useful when you have paused to read something.
More questions people ask NoaLingua
Does the video pause by itself?
Auto-pause after every sentence is a key away, and shadowing modes stop the video for you. Otherwise the player behaves normally.
Can I rebind the keys?
Every player key can be rebound individually, and there is a Language Reactor preset alongside the NoaLingua default. Keys YouTube reserves are refused with an explanation rather than silently colliding.
Does this work in fullscreen?
Yes. The transcript panel, which normally docks into YouTube’s sidebar, floats over the player in fullscreen because the sidebar no longer exists.
Where this is documented on NoaLingua
Related NoaLingua answers
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