YouTube Transcript Downloader
A YouTube transcript downloader saves the spoken content of a video as a file you can keep, share, and work with offline. Paste a link above and the extractor gives you the full transcript within seconds — as a plain TXT download for reading, an SRT file with timestamps, or a one-click copy to your clipboard.
Everything happens in your browser, on desktop and phone alike. No account, no software install, and no wrestling with YouTube's tiny transcript panel to get text out of a video.
Free, no sign-up — paste a YouTube link and get the script in seconds.
Open the extractorTXT, SRT, or clipboard: three ways to save a transcript
The TXT download strips out all timing and gives you the transcript as clean, readable text — ideal for archiving, quoting in an article, pasting into your notes, or sending to someone who would rather read than watch.
The SRT download keeps each line's start and end time, so it works both as a subtitle file and as a research tool that shows exactly when something was said. If you only want to skim, the timestamped view on the homepage shows the same timings without downloading anything — handy for jumping back to the right moment in the video while you take notes.
Why not copy from YouTube's transcript panel yourself
YouTube's built-in transcript panel was never designed for saving text. Copying from it means selecting small text with the mouse, pasting it into an editor, and then cleaning up stray line breaks and timestamps by hand. On a long video that is genuinely tedious, and there is no official download button anywhere.
The extractor reads the same caption track directly and hands you a finished file instead. What takes several minutes of copying and reformatting manually takes about five seconds here.
Downloading transcripts on your phone
There is no app to install. Open this page in Safari or Chrome on your phone, paste the video link, and tap Extract Script. The TXT and SRT downloads save straight to your Downloads folder — or the Files app on iOS — and the copy button works the same as on desktop.
That makes the tool handy for capturing a recipe from a cooking video while you are in the kitchen, or pulling quotes from a conference talk during a commute.
When a transcript cannot be downloaded
Downloads come from the video's caption track, so they only exist when captions do. Creator-uploaded subtitles and YouTube's auto-generated captions both work, in any language available for that video. If a video has no captions at all, the tool tells you honestly instead of producing an empty file.
One caution with auto-captions: they come from speech recognition, so names, numbers, and technical terms sometimes get garbled. Scan the transcript before quoting it anywhere important.