YouTube to text
Convert YouTube videos to text, free.
Paste a YouTube link and get every spoken word as plain, readable text. Strip the timestamps for clean prose, then copy it or save it as a .txt file.
Sign in to keep a history of every video you transcribe.
How it works
- 1
Paste the YouTube link
Any public watch page, youtu.be short link, Short or embed URL works.
- 2
Turn off timestamps
Flip the timestamps switch off to get one continuous block of text instead of timed lines.
- 3
Copy or download
Copy the text to your clipboard, or download it as a .txt file ready for any editor.
Why convert a YouTube video to text?
Reading is faster than watching. A transcript lets you skim a 40-minute video in a few minutes, search it for the one sentence you need, and quote it word for word.
Text is also easier to reuse. Turn a talk into a blog post, pull quotes for a newsletter, or paste a lecture into your notes app so you can study from it.
What you get
- The full transcript from the video's own captions, including auto-generated ones
- Plain text with timestamps on or off
- Every caption language the video publishes, switchable in one click
- One-click copy and .txt download, with .srt available too
- No account, no browser extension, no limit on caption transcripts
Frequently asked questions
- Is the YouTube to text converter free?
- Yes. Converting any public YouTube video with captions to text is free and unlimited, with no account needed.
- Can I get the text without timestamps?
- Yes. Switch timestamps off on the transcript page and the copy and .txt download become clean, continuous text.
- Does it work for videos in other languages?
- If the video publishes captions in several languages, you can switch between them and convert whichever one you need.
- What if the video has no captions?
- Videos without any caption track can't be read directly. On the AI plan you can upload the audio and have it transcribed instead.