YouTube Transcript
Read any YouTube video as text, beside the player, with every line clickable.
Try one
Why use this YouTube Transcript
Read along as it plays
The current line is highlighted word by word, so you can follow at reading speed instead of playback speed.
Click a line, jump there
The transcript is the scrubber. Find the moment by reading for it, not by dragging.
Search the whole video
Type a word and only the lines that contain it remain, each one still clickable.
Chapters down the side
Where the creator wrote chapters, they become a map of the transcript rather than a list under the video.
Who it is for
Language learners
Follow the words while you listen, and replay the half-second you missed by clicking it.
Lecture review
Skim an hour for the ten minutes that matter, then watch only those.
Fact-checking
Read what was actually said, in order, instead of what a clip implies was said.
How to use YouTube Transcript
- 01
Paste the video link
Full YouTube URLs, short youtu.be links, Shorts and links that already carry a timestamp all work.
- 02
Read, search, or jump
The transcript appears beside the player. Search it, or click any line to hear that moment.
- 03
Take the text with you
Copy it, or download plain text, Markdown, SRT or VTT.
Read a video instead of watching it
Some videos you want to watch. Others you just need the words from: the lecture with one section that matters, the interview with the quote you half remember, the tutorial where the actual command is buried at eleven minutes. Paste the link and the whole thing arrives as text you can read at your own speed.
Every line keeps the second it was spoken, and clicking it moves the player there. That turns the transcript into a way to navigate the video rather than a replacement for it — you read until something matters, then you hear it said.
Search inside the video
Type a word and every line containing it is filtered down, each one still clickable straight back to that moment in the audio. Finding where a specific company came up in a two-hour podcast takes a couple of seconds.
This is the part people underestimate until they use it. Finding one sentence in a long recording normally means scrubbing the timeline and guessing; with the text in front of you it takes a couple of seconds, and you can see the surrounding context before you decide to listen.
Where the text comes from, and what that means
Most transcripts here are the captions the platform already holds — sometimes written by the creator, more often produced by automatic speech recognition. Creator captions are close to perfect. Automatic ones are strong on ordinary speech and weak on names, acronyms and technical vocabulary, so the page labels which kind you are reading rather than presenting both as equally reliable.
When a word looks wrong, the fix is one click: play that line and hear it. Because the timestamps are preserved rather than stripped out, checking a suspicious passage never means hunting for it again.
What you can do with the text once you have it
Copy it, download it as plain text or Markdown, export it as SRT or VTT if you need real subtitle timings, or switch to the summary if it turns out the video was not worth reading in full after all.
The same transcript also feeds the flashcards, the mind map and the question box on this page, so nothing is processed twice. One paste covers reading, studying and checking.
Frequently asked questions
Open a video as text
Reading is faster than watching, and you can still hear any line you point at.
Read a video