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YouTube video to text: get every word, ready to copy

Written by the VidWords Team · · Updated · Report a correction

To get the text of a YouTube video, paste its link into VidWords and press Get transcript free, or open https://vidwords.com/?v=VIDEO_ID directly. You get every spoken word from the video's caption track as clean paragraphs, ready to copy or download as TXT, SRT, VTT, CSV or JSON. The first 3 videos a month need no account, and an hour-long video takes seconds because nothing is re-transcribed.

This opens the transcript on the VidWords homepage. You can also link to it directly: https://vidwords.com/?v= followed by the video id or the whole YouTube link.

How to convert a YouTube video to text

  1. Copy the video's link. On a computer it's in the address bar; in the YouTube app, tap Share → Copy link. Watch links, youtu.be short links, Shorts, live replays and embed links all work.
  2. Paste it into the box above, or on the VidWords homepage, and press Get transcript.
  3. Read the result as paragraphs with chapter headings. If you'd rather see one caption per line, or one block of text, change the layout to Timestamped lines or Plain text.
  4. Press Copy, choosing Text only beside it to leave the timestamps out. You can also Download the text as .txt, .srt, .vtt, .csv or .json.

What you get

YouTube stores captions as fragments of one to five seconds each. VidWords joins them into sentences and paragraphs, so the result reads like an article instead of a teleprompter feed. Here is the shape of a Copy → Text only result. The words below are an illustration, not a real video:

## Getting started

So today we're going to look at how the setup works, and why the
first step matters more than most people expect.

We'll start with the basics and then move on to the parts that
usually go wrong.

Copy with Timestamps instead and each paragraph opens with its time, like [1:42] We'll start with the basics…. The transcript also comes with:

To get subtitle files rather than plain text, use the same download menu. Downloading YouTube subtitles as SRT explains what each format is for.

Is it really every word?

It is every word in the video's caption track, unedited. If the creator uploaded captions, that's exactly what they published. If only YouTube's automatic captions exist, it's every word YouTube's speech recognition heard, including its mistakes. Names and jargon are the usual casualties.

Timing is per caption line, not per word. SRT, VTT, CSV and JSON give each line a start time, plus an end time or a duration, at roughly one- to five-second steps. No export gives each word its own timestamp. If you need word-level timing, run a speech-to-text tool on the audio.

Limits

The manual way: YouTube's "Show transcript" button

To be fair, YouTube does have a built-in transcript view, and it's fine for a quick skim. Open a video on desktop, expand the description, and click Show transcript. A panel appears beside the player with the captions listed line by line.

The catch is what it doesn't do. The text appears as short fragments, one per caption cue, with a timestamp glued to every line. There's no copy button and no export of any kind — your only option is to drag-select the whole panel, paste it somewhere, and then strip out hundreds of timestamps and rejoin the broken lines by hand. For a ten-minute video that's an annoying chore; for an hour-long interview it's an afternoon. On mobile the transcript panel exists too, but selecting text from it is even fiddlier.

If you only need to check what was said at one moment, the built-in panel is fine. If you actually need the text as text, a converter saves you the cleanup. Our guide to extracting YouTube transcripts walks through the differences in more detail.

The programmatic way

If video-to-text conversion is a step in a pipeline rather than a one-off task — feeding transcripts into a search index, a summarizer, or a content workflow — use the REST API. One request takes a video URL (or up to 50) and returns the text as structured JSON, so you never have to touch a browser at all.

How accurate is the text?

It depends on where the captions came from. When the creator uploaded their own captions, the text is exact — VidWords uses that track whenever one exists. When only auto-generated captions are available (they're clearly marked auto in the language dropdown), accuracy is typically very good for clear English speech and dips with background music, crosstalk, heavy accents, or niche jargon. Names and technical terms are the usual casualties, so give the text a quick skim before quoting it verbatim. The clickable timestamps make spot-checking fast: click the paragraph's timestamp, listen for ten seconds, and you've verified the passage against the source.

FAQ

Does it work on YouTube Shorts?

Yes. Paste a Shorts link like any other link and you get its text. Most Shorts with speech are auto-captioned. On a phone, see getting a Short's captions on your phone.

Can I get just one part of the video?

Load the whole transcript, then use the in-transcript search or the timestamps to find the part you need and copy that passage. Each paragraph's timestamp shows where it falls in the video.

What about videos without captions?

The text normally comes from the video's caption track, uploaded by the creator or auto-generated. YouTube auto-captions most videos with clear speech, so most talking videos work. If a video truly has no captions, an account on a paid plan or with purchased AI Processing Units can have the audio transcribed instead, at 3 AI Processing Units per audio minute plus the Cloud Request. Otherwise you see a clear message instead of a garbled result.

Is it really free?

Yes, within limits. The first 3 videos a month need no account. A free account includes 25 Cloud Requests and 200 AI Processing Units each month, and transcripts taken through the Chrome extension in your own browser are unlimited. Paid plans add larger allowances and higher API limits.

Paste a link and get the text →