How to Get the Transcript of a YouTube Video (Computer, Phone, and Download)

1. Add GetYouTubeTranscript from the Chrome Web Store.
2. Open any video on youtube.com.
3. The transcript is already open on the right. There is nothing to expand or click.

Each block has a time range. The block being spoken is highlighted as the video plays, and clicking a block jumps the video to that moment. More on what it does is on the extension page.

• Find a word: click the magnifying glass and type. Every match is highlighted and the count shows in the search box.
• Change language: open the language menu at the top. Captions lists every track the video has (this TED talk has 65). Translate to offers machine translations when the language you want is not there. Tracks marked "auto" are YouTube's speech recognition, not captions the creator wrote.

• Copy with timestamps: the red button copies the whole transcript, each block under its time range.
• Without timestamps: open the arrow next to it and choose Copy text only.
• As a file: choose Download .txt from the same menu.

The Summary and Chat tabs work on the same video: a written summary, or questions answered from the transcript.

1. Copy the video link from the address bar, or from Share in the YouTube app.
2. Paste it on the GetYouTubeTranscript homepage and click Get Free Transcript.
3. Click Copy for the whole text, or Download for a plain text file. When timestamps are available, you can also download subtitles as SRT or VTT.

Export formats explains TXT, SRT, VTT, JSON and the rest. Developers can fetch transcripts in code with the transcript API.

YouTube can show a transcript too, for reading along. It has no copy or download button.

• On a computer: click the description under the video to expand it, scroll to Transcript and click Show transcript. It opens in a panel called In this video. The three-dot menu there has Toggle timestamps, and the language menu is at the bottom.
• In the YouTube app: tap the video title to open the description, scroll to Transcript and tap Show transcript.

A transcript needs captions. If a video has none, YouTube shows no Show transcript button and the extension has nothing to load. Common reasons:

• The creator turned captions off or never added any.
• The video was uploaded recently, or is a live stream, and automatic captions are not ready yet.
• The speech is in a language YouTube does not caption automatically.
• It is mostly music or has little clear speech.

More causes and fixes are in YouTube captions not working.

If you own the channel, open YouTube Studio, go to Subtitles, pick the video and language, and use the menu next to the caption track to download the file. This only works for videos on channels you manage.