YouTube Transcript HQ

What it is

YouTube Transcript HQ extracts captions from any public YouTube video and displays them as searchable, citable text. Users can copy transcripts with one click or download them in six formats: TXT, SRT, VTT, CSV, and JSON. The service supports all caption languages the video provides, including automatically generated captions, and works with Shorts, live replays, lectures and podcasts. No account creation, email, or payment is required.

Questions from the bench

Is YouTube Transcript HQ free?

Yes. Every transcript is free to read, copy and download, and there is no account to create. If you open many videos in a short time you may be asked to confirm you are a person, which takes one click and costs nothing.

Which videos work?

Any public YouTube video that has captions works, including Shorts, live replays, lectures and podcasts. Private, unlisted, age-restricted and deleted videos cannot be read, and videos with captions turned off by the creator have no text to fetch.

What if the creator never wrote subtitles?

It usually still works. YouTube produces automatic captions for most videos with speech, and the tool reads those the same way. Automatic caption tracks are labeled as such since their punctuation and spelling of names are rougher than manually written tracks.

Can I get the transcript in another language?

Yes. Every caption track the video carries arrives in one fetch, so if the channel published Spanish, Japanese or German subtitles they are one click away in the language picker. The service does not translate tracks the video does not already have.

What can I do with the transcript?

You can read it, search it, quote it with timestamps, hand it to an AI assistant for a summary, or load the SRT or VTT file into an editor to caption your own cut. The words belong to whoever made the video, so you should credit the source.