Video → transcript

YouTube video transcript

Get the transcript of any YouTube video — paste a link below and the full text appears with clickable timestamps, ready to read, search, copy and export. Free, no sign-in.

Works on any video with captions · or add the Chrome extension for one-click transcripts on every video.

Get the transcript in one step

No install and no account. Copy the video URL, paste it into the box above, and the transcript loads in seconds — every line tagged with the moment it was spoken, so a click jumps the video there.

1. Copy the link from the address bar or Share button.
2. Paste it into the tool above.
3. Read, copy or export the transcript.

If you read transcripts often, the Chrome extension shows the same text right beside the player on the watch page — one click on any video, no copying links. For the full background, the YouTube transcript overview goes deeper, and how to get the transcript of a YouTube video is the step-by-step.

Paste a link, read the whole video as text — timestamps and all.

What you get

A YouTube video transcript is the spoken words of the video written out as text — the same words the captions carry, laid into one readable block instead of flashing by a line at a time. Each line keeps its timestamp, so the transcript doubles as a map of the video: skim it, find the part you want, and click to land there. It’s the video made readable, searchable and quotable.

Works on any captioned video

It runs on the captions YouTube already serves, so it works on whatever has a caption track: talks, tutorials, lectures, interviews, podcasts, news, music with lyrics. There’s no length limit — a two-hour podcast loads the same as a three-minute clip — and no queue. The only videos it can’t do are the ones with no captions at all; the player’s gear → Subtitles/CC will tell you whether a track exists.

Read the video instead of watching it

A video moves at the speaker’s pace; a transcript moves at yours. That’s the real reason to pull the text: you can read a fifteen-minute talk in three minutes, skim a long lecture for the one section you came for, or re-read a tricky explanation without scrubbing back and forth. The whole thing sits still on the page, so nothing is hidden behind a play head.

It’s also how you make a video findable. You can’t Ctrl-F a video, but you can search a transcript — type a name, a term or a phrase and land on exactly where it’s said, then click the timestamp to hear it in context. For a two-hour podcast or a conference recording, that turns an unsearchable wall of footage into something you navigate like a document. And when the speaker is fast, heavily accented, or hard to catch, the text fills the gaps the audio leaves — you read the lines you’d otherwise miss. For the timestamp side specifically, a transcript with timestamps goes deeper; to search within one, searching a YouTube transcript covers it.

Copy it, or save it as a file

Once the transcript is on screen, take it with you:

• Copy the whole thing to the clipboard, with or without timestamps.
• TXT / Markdown for notes, docs or pasting into an AI assistant.
• SRT / VTT if you want a timed caption file. See YouTube subtitles to SRT.

To save a file, downloading the transcript walks through the formats; for the clipboard, copying a YouTube transcript covers it.

How clean the transcript is

It’s only as clean as the captions behind it. Creator captions — written by the uploader — are punctuated and read well straight away. Auto-generated captions — YouTube’s speech recognition — are fine for clear speech but arrive without punctuation and stumble on names and jargon. When a video offers both, the creator track is the cleaner source; with an auto track, export the text, add a few full stops and fix any names, and it’s ready to use.

What people do with it

Once it’s text, the video fits wherever you work. Read it instead of watching. Search for the one line you need and quote it with its timestamp. Paste it into an AI assistant for a summary — it has the exact words, not a guess from audio. Students turn a lecture into revision notes; researchers pull a quote with its exact wording; creators reshape their own uploads into blog posts, show notes and social captions — close to a week of writing from a single video. Journalists pull the exact line that was said rather than their memory of it; accessibility teams use the text so a video can be read, not just heard. The job here is to get the words out cleanly; what you build from them is up to you. For turning them into plain prose, YouTube to text covers that side, and for the bigger picture the YouTube transcript overview ties it together.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get a YouTube video transcript?

Paste the video link into the tool above. The full transcript appears with clickable timestamps in seconds — then copy it or export it. It is free, with no sign-in.

Is the video transcript free?

Yes. Getting, reading, copying and exporting the transcript is free, with no account and no daily limit.

Does it work on long videos?

Yes. There’s no length cap — the full transcript of a long talk, lecture or podcast loads at once, and you can search it.

What if the video has no captions?

Then there’s no transcript to read. The tool works on any video that has captions — creator-made or auto-generated.