How to get a transcript of a YouTube video.
The fastest way to pull the full text of any YouTube video — with timestamps, translations, and export to SRT, VTT, TXT, or JSON. Works for lectures, podcasts, interviews, and multi-hour uploads.
The 10-second answer
- Copy the YouTube URL.
- Paste it into the transcript tool.
- Copy the text, download SRT/VTT/TXT/JSON, or click Summarize.
Extract a transcript in under a minute
1. Copy the video URL
From the browser address bar, or from YouTube's Share button. Both the full youtube.com/watch?v=…URL and the short youtu.be/… form work, as does the raw 11-character video ID.
2. Paste it into Y/T_TRANSCRIPT
Open the transcript tool, drop the URL into the input, and hit Extract. The full caption track loads in under a second — no signup, no browser extension.
3. Pick a language
If the video has multiple caption tracks, choose one. You can also translate any transcript into 100+ languages from the same page.
4. Export or summarize
Copy the raw text, download as SRT / VTT / TXT / JSON, or send it to the AI summarizer for a chapter-by-chapter overview.
Why not just use YouTube's transcript panel?
YouTube does show a "Show transcript" panel under most videos, but it's built for casual reading — not for research, publishing, or automation. Here's what's missing:
- No export — you can't download SRT, VTT, or JSON.
- No batch — one video at a time, no CSV upload.
- Translation is limited to YouTube's own system and often garbled.
- No AI summary, no speaker split, no sponsor detection.
- Not scriptable — no API for automations.
Y/T_TRANSCRIPT covers all of the above, and works on mobile browsers where the native panel is often hidden.
Which export format should you pick?
- TXT — plain reading, quoting, or feeding into ChatGPT / Claude.
- SRT / VTT — subtitles for video editors (Premiere, DaVinci, CapCut).
- JSON — programmatic use: each line with start / end timestamps.
- Markdown — drop straight into Notion, Obsidian, or a blog post.
Get the transcript in your language
Y/T_TRANSCRIPT ships with 100+ target languages. Pick one on the transcript page and the caption track is translated on the fly — useful for foreign-language lectures, interviews, or product reviews you want to read instead of watch.
Need transcripts for a whole channel?
Upload a CSV of up to 1,000 URLs to the pipeline tool and get a single ZIP back with SRT, VTT, TXT, and JSON per video. Ideal for content archives, podcast repurposing, and research corpora.
Turn the transcript into a summary
A raw transcript is a wall of text. From the transcript page, click Summarizeto get a TL;DR, chapter breakdown, key quotes, and action items — powered by the summarizer. This is what most people actually want when they ask for a "YouTube transcript."
FAQ
Can I get a transcript of any YouTube video?
Any public video with captions — manual or auto-generated. Private and age-restricted videos are not supported.
What if the creator disabled captions?
We fall back to automatic speech recognition. Accuracy is lower than human captions but still usable for summaries and search.
Is there a length limit?
No — multi-hour lectures and podcasts work. The tool streams the full caption track, not the first few minutes.
Is it free?
Yes for standard use. Batch jobs over 1,000 videos and API access are paid tiers.
Try it now
Paste any YouTube URL and get the full transcript in seconds.