Export format

YouTube to Markdown

Get a YouTube transcript as a Markdown file: the title as a heading, a source block with the link, channel, language and length, then the transcript in paragraphs. It drops straight into Obsidian, Notion, Logseq or a docs repo.

How it works

Paste a YouTube video link or ID.
Choose whether to keep [m:ss] timestamps on each line.
Copy the Markdown or download a .md file.

What the Markdown export looks like

Real output for “Me at the zoo”, the first video on YouTube, produced by the same code as the tool above.

# Me at the zoo

- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw
- Channel: jawed
- Language: en
- Duration: 0:19

## Transcript

All right, so here we are, in front of the elephants the cool thing about these guys is that they have really... really really long trunks and that's cool (baaaaaaaaaaahhh!!) and that's pretty much all there is to say

Who it's for

Note-takers using Obsidian, Notion or Logseq
Developers adding talks to a docs or knowledge repo
Researchers who keep sources next to their notes

Other formats

Plain text SRT subtitles WebVTT CSV JSON ChatGPT Claude NotebookLM Compare all formats

Need this for many videos?

Pull a playlist's transcripts with the playlist tool, or get the same data from code with the transcript API and MCP server.

YouTube to Markdown: questions

What does the Markdown file contain?

A level-one heading with the video title, a list with the source link, channel, language and duration, then a Transcript section with the text in paragraphs, or one timestamped line per caption.

Does it work in Obsidian and Notion?

Yes. It is standard Markdown with no special syntax, so any Markdown editor shows the heading, links and paragraphs correctly.

What if a video has no captions?

The tool can only export captions YouTube already has, creator-written or auto-generated. Videos with captions turned off have nothing to export, and the tool tells you so.

Can I export a whole playlist or channel?

This page exports one video at a time. For a playlist, the playlist tool pulls transcripts for its videos; for whole channels or recurring exports, the API and MCP server return the same data for every video.