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Free YouTube transcript generator

Paste any video link below. The transcript is generated from YouTube's own caption track and opens in a side panel next to the player, with timestamps you can click.

Works with youtube.com, youtu.be, /shorts/ and /live/ links.

What you get from the transcript generator

Text, timestamps, and a way out of the browser. That is the whole product.

This YouTube video transcript generator does not re-transcribe audio. It reads the caption track YouTube already stores for the video, either the one the creator uploaded or the automatic one. That is why it returns text in a couple of seconds instead of running a speech model over two hours of audio, and why the wording matches the captions on screen exactly.

  • Timestamps that seek. Lines are grouped into blocks of 15 to 25 seconds, cut on sentence boundaries. Click one, the player jumps there.
  • Copy or download. One button to the clipboard, one to a plain .txt file.
  • Search inside. Type a phrase, land on the moment it was said.
  • Caption language picker. If the video carries tracks in several languages, switch without reloading.
  • Follows you around YouTube. Open the next video and the panel regenerates on its own.

There is an AI layer too. The summary tab runs Gemini 2.5 over the whole transcript, and the tags tab pulls the keyword list the creator uploaded with.

Four steps

How to generate a YouTube transcript

1

Paste the link

Drop the URL in the box above. The video gets checked against YouTube before anything else happens.

2

Install the extension

One click from the Web Store, then pin the red icon so it sits next to the address bar.

3

Open the video

Click the icon. The panel slides in and the transcript is already loaded for whatever is playing.

4

Copy, save, or jump

Clipboard, .txt file, or a click on any timestamp to send the player there.

Which links the generator accepts

Every URL shape YouTube hands out resolves to the same eleven-character video ID, so all of these work:

Link formats and what happens with them
LinkResult
youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_IDStandard. Works.
youtu.be/VIDEO_IDShare link. Works.
youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_IDWorks when the Short has captions, which many do not.
youtube.com/live/VIDEO_IDWorks once the stream ends and captions are processed.
Link carrying &list= or &t=Extra parameters get stripped, the video still resolves.
Bare video IDEleven characters, no URL needed. Works.

When nothing can be generated

Worth saying plainly, because most tool pages skip it. A transcript exists only if YouTube holds a caption track for that video. Three cases return nothing at all:

  1. The uploader turned captions off and never uploaded a subtitle file.
  2. Automatic captions failed, usually music, heavy background noise, or a language the recogniser does not cover.
  3. The video is private, deleted or blocked in your region, in which case the box above will tell you so.

No tool can generate a transcript out of thin air here, ours included. Anything promising a transcript for a captionless video is either running its own speech recognition on the audio, which is a different and much slower product, or it is lying to you.

FAQ

YouTube transcript generator FAQ

Is the YouTube transcript generator free?
Yes. No account, no trial, no card. Daily caps keep the servers sane: 80 transcripts, 150 tag lookups and 20 AI summaries per day, resetting at midnight UTC. Normal research never gets near those numbers.
Does it generate transcripts with timestamps?
Every block carries one. They are clickable inside the panel, so a timestamp doubles as a way to seek the player. When you copy or download, you choose whether the timestamps come along.
Can I generate a transcript without installing anything?
Yes, through YouTube itself. Expand the description, click Show transcript, and the text appears in a panel. You then have to select and copy it by hand, and there is no download button. The extension exists to remove those two chores.
Which languages does the generator handle?
Whichever caption tracks the video carries. English, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese and a hundred more show up in the picker. It reads official tracks only, it does not translate audio by itself.
Is this an AI transcript generator?
The transcript part is not AI, it is YouTube's caption data, which is why it is fast and matches the video word for word. AI comes in on the summary tab, where Gemini 2.5 condenses the transcript.
Can I generate YouTube transcripts in bulk?
Not from a list of links, no. This works one video at a time from the page you are on, and the daily cap is 80. A spreadsheet of several hundred URLs is a job for an API, not for a browser extension.
What is the best free YouTube transcript generator?
Depends on where you work. If you paste links from a spreadsheet, a website tool fits better. If you already have the video open, an extension in the same tab saves the round trip. Ours is built for the second case.

Generate your first transcript in about a minute

Free, no account, no trial counter ticking down in the corner.

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