Convert YouTube Video to Text
Paste a YouTube URL and get the transcript in seconds — free, no sign-up, no software to install.
How it works
- 1
Copy the URL of the YouTube video you want to transcribe.
- 2
Paste that URL into the box above.
- 3
Press Generate Transcript and your text appears — copy it or download it.
Turn a YouTube video into text you can work with. This page is the conversion step: give it a link, get the spoken content back as a document, ready to paste into notes, a draft, or another tool.
Because the text comes from the video's caption track rather than from re-listening to the audio, the conversion is near-instant and does not depend on audio quality. What you get is what the video says, in order, with the option to keep the timestamps.
Related tools
- YouTube Video Translator
- Download YouTube Transcript
- YouTube Subtitle Downloader
- Download YouTube Captions
- YouTube to Text
- YouTube Video Transcript
- YouTube Transcript Extractor
- Transcript for YouTube Videos
Frequently asked questions
- How is a video converted to text?
- By reading the video's caption track — the subtitles YouTube already has for it — and returning them as text. Nothing is transcribed from scratch, which is why it is fast.
- What if the captions are wrong?
- Then the text inherits those errors. Auto-generated captions mishear names and technical terms in particular. The text is returned as the video provides it rather than silently corrected.
- Can I convert a private or unlisted video?
- Only if it is publicly reachable. The page fetches captions the same way a viewer would, so anything behind a login is out of reach.
- What formats can I get the text in?
- Plain text, timestamped text, SRT, and VTT. Plain text for reading and search, the subtitle formats for putting the text back onto a video.
- Does converting cost anything?
- No. It is free and unlimited, with no sign-up.