YouTube Transcript Extractor
Copy the transcript from a YouTube video, or open a caption file, and get plain text you can read, quote or edit. Timestamps, sound notes and the repeated lines of automatic captions are removed, and the captions are joined into paragraphs. Nothing is uploaded.
- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
- Free to use
1. Get the transcript from YouTube
On the video page, open the description, choose “Show transcript”, select all the text in the transcript panel and copy it. Or download the caption file (.srt, .vtt, .sbv) of your own video from YouTube Studio.
2. Paste it here and clean it up
How to use YouTube Transcript Extractor
- On YouTube, open the video description and choose “Show transcript”. Select the text in the panel and copy it.
- Paste it into the box, or open a .srt, .vtt or .sbv caption file.
- Choose what to do with timestamps and how to lay out the text.
- Select Extract text, then copy or download the result.
YouTube Transcript Extractor features
Four input formats
YouTube’s transcript panel, SubRip (.srt), WebVTT (.vtt) and YouTube’s own .sbv files are recognised automatically.
Timestamp options
Remove them, keep one per paragraph, or keep every one.
Readable paragraphs
Short caption lines are joined, and a new paragraph starts after a pause or a few sentences.
Noise removed
Notes such as [Music] and [Applause], formatting tags and the duplicated lines of automatic captions are dropped.
Statistics
Word count, number of captions, last timestamp and reading time.
Private
The text is processed in your browser. This site does not contact YouTube and stores nothing.
When to use YouTube Transcript Extractor
- Quoting from a lecture, interview or talk.
- Turning your own video into a blog post or show notes.
- Studying or translating the content of a video.
- Making a caption file readable for proofreading.
YouTube Transcript Extractor FAQ
Why do I have to copy the transcript myself?
YouTube offers no public interface for reading the captions of other people’s videos. Its official API returns caption text only to the owner of a video. Tools that fetch transcripts from a link do so through undocumented endpoints, which break without notice and are outside YouTube’s terms. This tool works with the transcript YouTube shows you, which is always permitted.
Where is “Show transcript” on YouTube?
On a computer, expand the description under the video and scroll to the “Transcript” section, then select “Show transcript”. In the mobile app, open the description and tap “Show transcript”. The option only appears when the video has captions.
What if a video has no transcript?
Then it has no captions, neither uploaded by the owner nor generated automatically, and there is nothing to extract. For your own audio or video files, the Audio to Text tool on this site can create a transcript.
How do I get the caption file of my own video?
In YouTube Studio, open the video, choose Subtitles, and use the menu next to a subtitle track to download it as .vtt, .srt or .sbv. Open that file here.
Are automatic captions accurate?
They are produced by speech recognition and contain errors, especially with names, technical terms, accents and background noise. They usually lack punctuation. Proofread before quoting.
Can I use the transcript text freely?
The words of a video are protected by copyright like the video itself. Short quotations with attribution are generally fine; republishing a whole transcript needs the permission of the rights holder.
From captions to readable text
Captions are written for the screen. A caption file is a list of short lines, each with the moment it appears and disappears, sized to be read in a couple of seconds while the picture moves. That is the wrong shape for reading as a document: the lines break in the middle of sentences, every line carries a timestamp, and sound descriptions are mixed in with speech.
Converting captions into text means undoing that formatting. The time codes are separated from the words. Lines are joined into running text. Markup that controls colour or position is stripped. With automatically generated captions there is an extra step: because the text scrolls, each line is often repeated in the following caption, and the duplicates have to be removed.
Paragraphs are the difficult part, since captions carry no paragraph marks. Timing offers a clue: a pause of many seconds usually marks a change of thought. Where the captions include punctuation, sentence ends give a second clue. This tool starts a new paragraph after a long pause or after several sentences, which produces text that is comfortable to read even if the breaks do not always fall where an editor would put them.
Keeping some timestamps can be useful. One at the start of each paragraph lets a reader jump back to the right place in the video, which matters for study notes and for checking a quotation. For an article or a translation, plain text without any timestamps is easier to work with. Both are one option away.