YouTube Description Extractor

Why copying a description by hand goes wrong

A YouTube description can run to 5,000 characters, and the player shows you the first few lines until you expand it. Select-and-copy from the expanded box works on desktop, right up until the description contains a chapter list — then you drag across a scrolling container, miss the last few lines, and paste something that's silently incomplete. On the mobile app there's no reliable text selection at all.

This reads the description from the video's own metadata, so what you get is the complete string, exactly as the creator saved it — line breaks, emoji, trailing hashtags and all.

What comes back

• The full description, as plain text with the original formatting preserved.
• Timestamps, separated. Every line beginning with a m:ss or h:mm:ssmarker is collected into its own block — a video's chapter list, ready to paste.
• Links, deduplicated. Affiliate links, socials, sources, sponsor URLs — pulled out and listed once each.
• Keywords, when the video publishes any.A minority of videos expose a keyword list in their metadata. Most don't, and an empty result means nothing was published — not that the video is untagged.

Extractor, generator, or chapter tool?

Three neighbouring tools, three different jobs:

• This pagereads a description that already exists on someone's video.
• The YouTube Description Generator writes a new one for your video from its transcript.
• The YouTube Chapter Extractor rebuilds a chapter list from the transcript — use it when a video shows chapter markers but has nothing in its description, which means YouTube generated them automatically.

FAQ

How do I copy a YouTube video's description?

On desktop you can expand 'Show more' under the video and select the text by hand, but YouTube truncates long descriptions and the mobile app makes selection painful. Paste the URL above instead and you get the complete description as clean plain text, ready to copy in one click.

Does this work on videos without captions?

Yes. This tool reads the video's public metadata, not its transcript, so captions being disabled makes no difference. That's what separates it from our transcript-based tools.

Can I extract the description from a private or unlisted video?

No. Only publicly viewable videos expose their metadata. Unlisted videos are a grey area — some resolve, most don't — and private videos never do.

Does it pull the timestamps out too?

Yes. Any line in the description starting with a timestamp is collected into its own copyable block, which is usually why people want the description in the first place — to lift a video's chapter list.

Is the description extractor free?

Yes, with no signup and no limit. It doesn't call an AI model, so there's nothing for us to meter.