How to get the transcript of a YouTube video, as a file
Three ways to get a YouTube transcript: the Show transcript button, a tool that reads the captions into TXT or SRT, and a speech model when there are no captions.
Three ways to get a YouTube transcript: the Show transcript button, a tool that reads the captions into TXT or SRT, and a speech model when there are no captions.
Most YouTube videos already carry their words as captions: written by the creator, or made automatically by YouTube. Getting the transcript is mostly a question of where you want the text to end up. Here are the three ways, from the one built into YouTube to the one for videos with no captions at all.
On a computer, open the video, click the description under it to expand it, and look for the Transcript section near the end with a Show transcript button. A panel opens beside the video with every line and its timestamp; clicking a line jumps the video to that moment. The YouTube app on a phone has the same button inside the description.
What it is good for: reading along, or finding the minute where something was said.
Where it stops:
The YouTube transcript page on ClipScript reads the same caption track and hands it back in the shapes people actually use:
That is free for any public video with captions, with no account, because no model runs: the words are YouTube's own caption track, with YouTube's own cue times. That also means YouTube's automatic captions come back with their mistakes. Read names and numbers against the video before you quote them.
When a video carries no captions at all, the same page sends its audio to a speech model (Whisper large v3 turbo) instead. Three such runs a day are free for videos up to 3 minutes; after that it is 3 credits a minute, up to 10 minutes. For a file you have on your own computer, use video to text or MP3 to text.
A transcript is raw material. From the same text, ClipScript can write YouTube chapters with timestamps that follow YouTube's rules, a summary with key points, a blog post, or YouTube tags taken from what the video actually says. Each is priced on its button, from 1 to 4 credits.
A transcript of someone else's video is still their work. Reading it, taking notes and quoting a line with credit are fine; publishing their whole script as your own is not, and on YouTube it is the quickest way to a copyright claim. Private and members-only videos cannot be read here at all.