How to Download a YouTube Transcript
YouTube shows you a transcript but has no download button on the watch page. Here is how to get the text out, including as a proper subtitle file.
The Scriptorium team ·
YouTube will show you a transcript, but on the watch page there is no download button — you copy the text out by hand. If the video is yours, YouTube Studio does have a real download, and uploading the file to a transcription tool gives you more formats than either.
Copying it from the watch page
This works for any public video with captions.
- Open the video on a desktop browser.
- Click …more under the title, scroll to the bottom of the description, and click Show transcript.
- In the transcript panel, open the three-dot menu and choose Toggle timestamps to turn them off. Skip this if you want them.
- Click at the start of the transcript, scroll to the end, and shift-click to select it all.
- Copy, then paste into a document.
The result is plain text with no speaker labels and no structure. For a long video the selection step is fiddly, which is the main argument for one of the other methods.
Downloading subtitles from YouTube Studio
For your own videos there is a genuine download:
- Open YouTube Studio and go to Subtitles.
- Select the video, then the language track.
- Use the menu to download the subtitles, choosing SRT, VTT or SBV.
This gives you a real subtitle file rather than copied text. It is still the automatic caption text, so it carries the same errors.
Getting a better file by uploading the video
If what you want is an accurate transcript in a specific format, transcribe the file rather than exporting YouTube's guess at it. Download your video from YouTube Studio, upload it to video to text, correct anything wrong, then export:
| Format | For |
|---|---|
| Plain text | Pasting into a document. |
| Timestamped text | Citing a moment. |
| SRT | Uploading back to YouTube as corrected subtitles. |
| WebVTT | Web players and YouTube. |
| Markdown | Show notes or an article, with speakers. |
| JSON | Word-level timings, for code. |
| CSV | Spreadsheets. |
Uploading a corrected SRT back to YouTube in Studio replaces the automatic captions, which improves the experience for viewers who use them and gives YouTube better text to index.
About browser extensions and downloader sites
There are many extensions and sites that offer one-click YouTube transcript downloads. Some work well. Two things to weigh before using one: extensions that read page content have broad access to what you browse, and tools that download video rather than just captions sit outside YouTube's terms of service.
The two methods above use YouTube's own features and your own files, which avoids both questions.