How to get a YouTube transcript
YouTube shows a transcript for any video that has captions. You copy it from the video's page; this page doesn't open YouTube links.
- Open the video on YouTube in a web browser.
- Open the description below the video and choose Show transcript. The transcript follows along as the video plays, and selecting a line jumps there.
- Select the transcript from its first line to its last and copy it.
- Paste it into the box above. Each time and its line are read together, whether the times sit above the words or beside them.
If there is no Show transcript, the video has no captions. YouTube's help lists why automatic captions can be missing: they may still be processing, the language may not be supported, the video may be too long, the sound may be poor or the speech unrecognized, there may be a long silence at the start, or several people or languages may overlap.
Captions from your own channel
For your own videos, YouTube Studio downloads the captions as a file. Open Subtitles, choose the video, select Edit next to the language, then Options and Download subtitles. Open the file here with Open a caption file: SRT, VTT and SBV files all work. You can turn the file into clean text for a blog post or show notes, or into the other subtitle format.
A downloaded file keeps each caption's exact start and end, so subtitles made from it keep YouTube's timing to the millisecond. Times copied from the transcript beside the video are whole seconds.
What the cleanup does
Text joins YouTube's short caption lines into paragraphs and removes the times. Paragraphs end at a sentence after about 70 words when the captions have punctuation; without punctuation they break at a pause, or every 110 words or so. A >> in the captions starts a new paragraph. Tick Timestamps to keep the time of each paragraph's first line, for example [2:15]. Sound tags such as [Music] and [Applause] are removed unless you untick that option. Word holds the same paragraphs in a .docx document.
Subtitles (.srt) and Web captions (.vtt) keep one subtitle per caption line. A line copied from the transcript starts at its time and ends when the next one starts; when the next line is more than 7 seconds away, it stays on screen for a reading time based on its length instead. Lines that share a second become one subtitle. A caption file keeps its own start and end times.
Apart from a capital letter at the start of each paragraph, the words stay exactly as YouTube wrote them. To read the transcript in another language, download it as SRT and open it in the subtitle translator, which translates between English and 15 languages and keeps every cue's timing.
No transcript? Transcribe the video
When a video has no captions, or you want a transcript written from the sound itself, transcribe the file with video to text. For a video you uploaded, YouTube Studio's Content page has Download in each video's menu, which saves an MP4 copy. StemVocal transcribes it with a time for every word, lets you correct the text against the playback and exports TXT, Word, SRT or VTT. It is free for recordings up to 30 minutes, 2 jobs a day; longer files up to 3 hours and speaker labels use credits.
YouTube is a trademark of Google LLC. StemVocal is not affiliated with YouTube or Google.
Good to know
Can I paste a YouTube link instead?
No. This page doesn't open links or download videos. On YouTube, choose Show transcript in the video's description, copy the lines and paste them here.
How do I remove the timestamps from a YouTube transcript?
Paste it above and keep Text selected. The times are removed and the short caption lines are joined into paragraphs. Tick Timestamps to keep one time at the start of each paragraph.
Can I turn a YouTube transcript into an SRT file?
Yes. Choose Subtitles (.srt) or Web captions (.vtt). Each line becomes a subtitle that starts at its YouTube time and ends when the next line starts. Times copied from the transcript are whole seconds, so check the timing before you publish.
Why doesn't the text have punctuation?
The cleanup keeps YouTube's words as they are and adds no punctuation of its own, so captions without full stops stay that way. If the video is yours, transcribing the file itself gives you a new transcript written from its sound.
Is it free?
Yes. Cleaning up a transcript needs no account and doesn't use any of your 2 free StemVocal jobs a day.
Is my transcript uploaded?
No. The text you paste or the file you open becomes the result on this page and isn't saved anywhere. Download or copy the result before you close the tab.
What if the video has no transcript?
Only videos with captions have one. If the video is yours, download it from YouTube Studio and transcribe it here: free for recordings up to 30 minutes, 2 jobs a day.