GUIDE

How to get the transcript of a YouTube video

Published —

On a computer, open the video, expand the description and click “Show transcript”: the transcript opens beside the player with timestamps, and you can select and copy the text. The button only appears if the video has captions — uploaded by the creator or generated automatically by YouTube. For a cleaned-up text without the line breaks and filler, you can use a tool that turns the video into a readable transcript, such as KnowledgeClip’s full-transcript mode.

How do I open the transcript on YouTube?

  1. 01 Open the video on youtube.com. The transcript panel is part of the regular watch page; no extension is needed.
  2. 02 Expand the description. Click the description under the video (or “…more”) to open it in full.
  3. 03 Click “Show transcript”. It is in the expanded description, usually near the bottom. The transcript opens in a panel next to the video, each line with its timestamp; clicking a line jumps the video there.
  4. 04 Copy the text. Select the lines with the mouse and copy them. If you do not want the timestamps, the panel’s menu (⋮) lets you hide them before copying.

Why is there no “Show transcript” button?

Almost always because the video has no captions. YouTube generates automatic captions for many videos, but not all: they may be missing for some languages, for music or poor audio, for live streams, and for videos uploaded very recently — automatic captions can take a while to appear after upload. A creator can also have no captions uploaded at all.

In that case there is no text to copy, and the only ways to get one are to transcribe the audio — by hand or with a speech-to-text tool.

Can I download a YouTube transcript as a file?

For your own videos, yes: in YouTube Studio, the Subtitles section lets you download caption files. For other people’s videos YouTube has no download button; copying from the transcript panel is the built-in way.

How accurate are automatic captions?

Good enough to follow a clear speaker, not good enough to quote without checking. Names, technical terms and numbers are where errors cluster, and automatic captions often come with little or no punctuation. Before you quote a line, listen to that moment of the video.

How do I get a clean, readable transcript?

A raw transcript is one line per caption — readable, but not like a text. KnowledgeClip has a full-transcript depth that returns the video as clean text, available on every plan including Free (for videos that already have subtitles). On paid plans it also transcribes videos that have no captions at all, and the text can be exported to Markdown.

Questions

Is the YouTube transcript free?

Yes. The transcript panel is a standard feature of the watch page and costs nothing.

Can I get the transcript on my phone?

On many videos the YouTube app shows the transcript in the video description as well. Copying long text is easier on a computer.

Can I get a transcript of a video without captions?

Not from YouTube itself. You need speech-to-text: either a transcription tool or a service that transcribes the audio for you.