YouTube Shorts Transcript_
YouTube hides the "Show transcript" button inside the Shorts interface — on mobile there's no way to open it at all. Here's the workaround: paste the Shorts URL into Y/T_TRANSCRIPT and get the full text in under a second.
Why can't I find the transcript button on Shorts?
YouTube's Shorts player was designed for vertical swipe playback. The "…more" menu that hosts Show transcript on regular videos doesn't exist on Shorts — not in the app, not on mobile web, and not on desktop. This is a UI limitation, not a caption limitation: the captions are still there, they're just not exposed.
Get the transcript of a Short (30 seconds)
- Open the Short and tap Share → Copy link. The URL will look like
youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID. - Go to youtubegettranscript.com.
- Paste the Shorts URL into the extractor.
- Tap Extract — the full transcript loads with timestamps.
- Copy the text or export as
.SRT,.VTT,.TXT, or.JSON.
Shorts URLs are supported natively — no need to reformat them into watch?v=. Both youtube.com/shorts/… and youtu.be/… work.
What if the Short has no captions?
A lot of Shorts creators skip captions. When no manual or auto-generated track is available, Y/T_TRANSCRIPT falls back to Whisper ASR and transcribes the audio directly — so you still get a full transcript, even for silent-caption Shorts.
Translate a Short to your language
After extraction, pick any of 100+ languages to translate the transcript — useful for viral international Shorts where the audio is in another language.
Repurpose Shorts into content
Once you have the text, you can:
- Turn a viral Short into a tweet or LinkedIn post.
- Batch-extract a creator's entire Shorts library with batch mode.
- Feed the transcript into ChatGPT or Claude for a summary — see our AI repurposing guide.
FAQ
Does this work on iPhone and Android? Yes. Y/T_TRANSCRIPT runs in the browser — no app to install.
Is it free? 100% free, no signup, no watermark.
Does it work for Shorts under 60 seconds? Yes — any length, any language.