YouTube Transcript Generator

Getting a YouTube video as text

YouTube has a transcript built in, and it's worth knowing where it is: open the video's description, scroll to the bottom and press Show transcript. A panel opens next to the video with the captions line by line. It has three limits. It only exists when the video has captions, it can't be downloaded, and selecting text from it on a phone is close to impossible.

This page gets around all three. It doesn't read the caption track at all; it listens to the video, so it works the same whether the creator uploaded captions, relied on YouTube's automatic ones, or turned them off. The result is plain text you can copy in one tap, a .txt file, or an .srt subtitle file.

What you can do with the transcript

• Quote a video accurately. Search the text for the line you remember and the timestamp next to it tells you exactly where it is, so you can link to that moment (how to share a video at a timestamp).
• Study from a lecture or tutorial. Reading a 40-minute lecture takes a fraction of the time, and you can paste it into notes.
• Repurpose your own video. A transcript is the raw material for a blog post, a newsletter, show notes or social posts.
• Add subtitles to your video. Download the .srt and upload it in YouTube Studio under Subtitles, or import it into your editor. Read through it once first; names and jargon are where any transcript slips.
• Make chapters. Chapters are built from what's said and when. The chapter generator does that step for you and writes a title and description too.

Text or SRT: which download to pick

Pick .txt when a person will read it. Untick Timestamps first if you want flowing paragraphs instead of one line per sentence. Pick .srt when software will read it: YouTube Studio, Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut and VLC all accept SRT, a numbered list of lines with start and end times like this:

1
00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:17,000
A few years ago, I broke into my own house.

2
00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:18,000
I had just driven home.

What it can't transcribe

• Private, members-only and age-restricted videos. The video has to be watchable without signing in.
• Live streams in progress. Run it once the stream has ended and been processed.
• Song lyrics, word for word. Speech comes out well; sung words over music are hit and miss.

FAQ

How do I get the transcript of a YouTube video?

Paste the video's link above and press Get transcript. You get every spoken sentence with the time it starts, which you can copy or download as a .txt or .srt file. On YouTube itself you can open the description, scroll to the end and press Show transcript, but only when the video has captions, and there's no download button.

Does it work on videos without captions?

Yes. The tool listens to the video itself instead of reading YouTube's caption track, so a video whose owner never added or turned off captions still gets a transcript. A video with no speech at all, like a music-only clip, gets a short description of what's shown every half minute instead.

Which languages does it support?

The transcript comes out in the language the video is spoken in, detected automatically. English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Hindi, Polish and most other widely spoken languages work.

How accurate are the timestamps?

In our checks against creator-made captions, sentence start times landed within about two seconds. That's close enough to jump to a moment, quote a line or build chapters, but if you're syncing subtitles frame by frame, check the SRT in an editor before publishing.

Is it free?

Your first transcript is free without an account, and one more after you sign in with Google. After that it uses the same monthly allowance as the chapter generator: 20 videos a month on Starter and 75 on Pro.

What's the longest video it can transcribe?

30 minutes on the free tries, 90 minutes on Starter and 10 hours on Pro. Long videos are split into 20-minute parts and transcribed in parallel, so a 45-minute lecture takes about the same 20–30 seconds as a short one.