YouTube transcript generator: free, with timestamps, TXT or SRT

Paste a YouTube link and get the full transcript in a couple of seconds, every line timestamped. Copy it or download a TXT or SRT file. Free, no account, no sign-up.

YouTube video link Get transcript

Free, no sign-up. Works on any public video with captions, including YouTube's auto-generated ones. Watch, youtu.be, Shorts and live links. Copy the text or download TXT or SRT, with or without timestamps.

How to get the transcript of a YouTube video

1. Copy the video link. On YouTube, click Share under the video and copy the link, or copy the address bar. Watch, youtu.be, Shorts and live links all work.
2. Paste it and click Get transcript. Paste the link into the box at the top of this page and click Get transcript. The text appears in a second or two.
3. Pick the caption track. If the video has captions in more than one language, choose the one you want from the menu above the transcript.
4. Choose timestamps or plain text. Tick or untick timestamps. With them, every line starts with the time it is said; without them you get one block of text.
5. Copy or download. Click Copy, Download TXT for a text file, or Download SRT for a subtitle file you can load into a video editor or YouTube Studio.

The tool reads the captions the video already has on YouTube. It does not download the video and does not run speech recognition of its own, which is why a YouTube video transcript comes back in about the time a page takes to load. Above the text you see the video title, the channel, the length, the word count and where the words came from: captions uploaded by the creator, or YouTube's auto-generated ones.

Try it with a real video

These were checked on 23 September 2026. Click one to run it:

• Run Tim Urban, "Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator" (TED, 14 min). 315 caption lines from the English track TED uploaded; the menu offers 50 tracks.
• Run Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford commencement address (15 min). 244 caption lines; 9 tracks in the menu.
• Run Will Stephen, "How to sound smart in your TEDx Talk" (6 min). 128 caption lines, a good short test.

Getting the transcript on YouTube itself

YouTube has its own transcript viewer, and for reading along with a video it works well. Where it falls short is getting the text out: there is no copy or download button, and selecting the panel by hand picks up the timestamps line by line. The steps below describe YouTube's layout as of October 2026; YouTube moves these controls from time to time.

On a computer. Open the video and click the description under it (the "...more" link) to expand it. Near the end of the description there is a Transcript section with a Show transcript button. The transcript opens in a panel next to the video, each line with its time. Clicking a line jumps to that moment, and the panel can hide the timestamps and switch language when there is more than one track.

On the phone app. Tap the title or description under the video, scroll down and tap Show transcript. The text scrolls with the video. Copying from the app is awkward, so on a phone this page is the quicker route to text you can paste somewhere else.

If you do not see Show transcript at all, the video almost always has no captions, and this tool will tell you the same thing.

With timestamps or as plain text

Keep the timestamps when the times matter: quoting someone with the moment as the citation, writing chapters, checking a fact against the video, or handing the text to an AI model and asking it to point to where something is said. Each timestamp here is a link to that second of the video, and copied or downloaded text keeps them as [12:34] at the start of each line.

Untick timestamps when you want prose, the plain YouTube to text version: a blog draft, notes, a translation, or search. Without timestamps the caption lines are joined into one block, which reads far better than line-by-line fragments, because YouTube splits captions for the screen, not at the end of sentences.

SRT: the transcript as a subtitle file

SRT is the plain-text subtitle format almost every editor and platform accepts. Each cue is a number, a start and end time down to the millisecond, and the line of text. Download SRT gives you one cue per caption line of the video, ready to import into Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut or back into YouTube Studio for a re-upload or a second channel.

Two details are handled for you. YouTube's automatic captions roll: each line stays on screen until the next one finishes, so raw cues overlap. The export trims every cue to end where the next begins, so lines do not pile up on top of each other, and a caption that would only flash by gets at least half a second on screen.

An SRT made from captions is only as good as the captions. Uploaded subtitles are usually clean; automatic ones carry the recognizer's mistakes. If you are subtitling a clip for publishing, read it through once.

Languages, auto-generated captions and translations

A YouTube video can have several caption tracks. The tool picks one in this order: subtitles a person uploaded in the language spoken in the video; then YouTube's automatic track in that language; then any uploaded track, English first; then any automatic track. When there is more than one real track, a menu above the transcript switches between them without leaving the page.

YouTube can also machine-translate its automatic captions into dozens of languages on the fly. Those are left out of the menu on purpose: they are a translation of a transcription, two layers of guessing away from what was said. Translations the creator uploaded are real tracks and are offered.

Automatic captions deserve a word of caution. They are speech recognition, so names, brands and jargon come out spelled the way they sound, overlapping speakers get merged, and on older videos there is little or no punctuation. For a quote you will publish, check the moment in the video: that is what the timestamp link is for.

When there is no transcript

Some videos have no captions at all: music and videos without speech, uploads so recent that YouTube has not processed them yet, and channels that turned automatic captions off. Private, members-only, age-restricted and removed videos cannot be read either, and a premiere or a live stream only has captions after it has aired and been processed. In each case the tool says so, rather than inventing text.

Occasionally YouTube does not answer at all, and the tool asks you to try again in a minute. That is about the connection, not the video: a retry usually works, and Show transcript under the description is the fallback.

If you need the words of a video without captions, the OpenShorts clip generator runs its own speech recognition with word-level timing and uses it to cut the video into subtitled vertical clips. That is the paid product, with a free allowance of 20 minutes a month on OpenShorts Cloud and paid plans from $12 a month on the pricing table, or free with no cap when you self-host the open source code.

What people use a YouTube transcript for

• Notes and studying. Read a lecture or a tutorial at your own speed, search it for the part you need, and keep the timestamps to jump back.
• Quotes with a source. Copy the exact words of a talk or an interview, with the timestamp as the citation and the link to that second.
• Blog posts, newsletters and show notes. Plain text is a first draft for an article version of the video, or the raw material for show notes and a description.
• Translation. Download the SRT, translate it, and you have subtitles in another language that keep the original timing.
• Feeding an AI model. Paste the transcript into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to summarise it, ask questions about it or draft chapters. Keep the timestamps so the answer can point to the moment it comes from. Our title, description and tag generator works from a short brief, and a few lines of the transcript make a good one.
• Finding the moment to clip. Skim the text for the line worth a Short, then cut it. If you would rather have the whole video cut into vertical clips for you, see how OpenShorts handles long YouTube videos and YouTube Shorts, or paste the link into the YouTube to Shorts converter.
• Accessibility and editing. An SRT lines the words up with the timeline in any editor, which is the start of burned-in captions or a cleaned-up subtitle track.

TikTok, Vimeo and other sites

TikTok links work in the box above, and there is a page for them: the TikTok transcript generator reads the captions TikTok shows on a video and exports them the same way. Vimeo, Instagram, X and other sites are not supported by this tool.

Limits

• One video per request. Playlists, channels and search pages are refused; a watch link that also names a playlist reads just the video.
• 10 transcripts every 10 minutes and 60 a day from the same network, plus a shared daily cap for the whole tool that resets at midnight UTC. A video that was read in the last 24 hours comes from the cache and does not count.
• Only public videos, only captions that already exist, and no machine translations.
• If YouTube takes longer than 45 seconds to answer, the request stops and you can try again.

Privacy

There is no account, so nothing you look up is tied to you. The server keeps each result in memory for up to 24 hours so a popular video is fetched from YouTube once, then forgets it. The transcript is laid out in your browser, and Copy, TXT and SRT are produced there too: the files never pass through our servers. Analytics record that the tool was used, whether it worked and how long it took, not which video you asked for.

Common questions

How do I get the transcript of a YouTube video?

Copy the video link, paste it into the box on this page and click Get transcript. You get the full text with timestamps, which you can copy or download as TXT or SRT. On YouTube itself, open the description and click Show transcript, which shows the text in a panel but has no download button.

How do I convert a YouTube video to text?

Paste the link above, untick timestamps and click Copy or Download TXT: you get YouTube to text as one block of prose, built from the video's own captions. Keep timestamps on if you want each line to point back to its moment. It works for any public video that has captions, including auto-generated ones.

Is this YouTube transcript generator free?

Yes. There is no account, no payment and no sign-up. To keep it fast for everyone it allows 10 transcripts per 10 minutes and 60 per day from the same network, and the whole tool has a shared daily cap that resets at midnight UTC.

Can I get a YouTube transcript with timestamps?

Yes. Timestamps are on by default and each one links to that moment of the video. Untick timestamps to get plain text in one block. Copy and TXT follow the checkbox; the SRT file always carries start and end times.

Can I download a YouTube transcript as a text file or SRT?

Yes. Download TXT saves the text as shown, with or without timestamps. Download SRT saves a subtitle file with one numbered cue per caption line, which Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut and YouTube Studio can import.

Does it work on videos with only auto-generated captions?

Yes. When the creator has not uploaded subtitles, the tool returns YouTube's automatic captions in the language spoken in the video and labels them as auto-generated. They are speech recognition, so expect misspelled names and, on older videos, little punctuation.

Why does it say a video has no captions?

Because YouTube has none for it: no uploaded subtitles and no automatic track. That happens with music, with very recent uploads YouTube has not processed yet, and when a channel turns automatic captions off. The tool does not guess text it cannot read.

Can I get the transcript of a YouTube Short or a live stream?

Yes, paste the Shorts or live link as it is. A Short with speech usually has an automatic track like any other video. A live stream has captions once it has finished and YouTube has processed it; a stream in progress or a premiere that has not aired cannot be read.

Which languages does it support?

Every language YouTube has a real caption track for. The menu lists the tracks uploaded by the creator and YouTube's automatic track in the spoken language. YouTube's machine translations of the automatic track are left out, because they are not what was said.

Can I translate a YouTube transcript?

If the creator uploaded subtitles in other languages, pick one from the menu: those are human translations. Otherwise download the TXT or SRT and run it through a translation tool; an SRT keeps its timing, so the translated file still works as subtitles.

Does it work on private, members-only or age-restricted videos?

No. The tool reads only what YouTube shows to anyone without signing in. Private, members-only, age-restricted and removed videos get a message saying their captions cannot be read.

Can I get a transcript from TikTok or other sites?

TikTok, yes: paste a TikTok link here or use the TikTok transcript generator, which reads the captions TikTok shows on the video. Vimeo, Instagram and other sites are not supported.

Do you store the transcripts or the links I paste?

The server keeps each result in memory for up to 24 hours so the same video is not fetched from YouTube twice, and nothing is tied to you because there is no account. Analytics record that the tool was used and whether it worked, not which video.

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