YouTube transcripts allow you to read videos when you can't listen to audio. They're also helpful for improving accessibility, boosting SEO, and repurposing video content.
In this article, we’ll learn:
💡 How to access YouTube transcripts on any device
💡 How YouTube transcript generators work
💡 About a faster way to understand videos
Yes — even faster than getting a transcript.
There’s lots to cover, so let’s dig in.
A YouTube transcript is a text version of everything said in a video. It appears as scrollable text alongside the video, with timestamps that let you jump to specific sections.
But how do these transcripts appear?
You might want to get a transcript of a YouTube video for several reasons, the most popular being:
To quickly search through a video. It’s faster to scan the text than to watch the video, especially if that video is a multi-hour lecture.
To reuse the content. You can take a video and transform it into a blog post. The transcript is already there — all you need to do is clean it up a bit.
To make it easier to take notes. Instead of pausing constantly to write things down, you can review the full transcript after watching.
For SEO benefits. Publishing transcripts on your website helps search engines understand your video content. This can improve your rankings and make your content easier to discover.
To translate a video. If the video is in another language, and there are no English subtitles (either manual or auto-generated. This is rare, but it happens), a transcript is the only way to understand it.
YouTube creates transcripts in two ways: automatic generation or manual upload.
YouTube’s automatic transcripts use speech recognition technology to turn spoken audio into text as the video plays.
The system listens to the dialogue and generates captions, which are then used to create the transcript.
Note: This process happens automatically for most public videos on the platform, but not all of them, in which case there’s the fallback — manual transcripts.
Manual transcripts are uploaded by video creators themselves, either written by hand or produced through professional transcription services.
Since they’re reviewed by humans, these transcripts are generally more accurate.
☝️ A thing about accuracy: How accurate automatic transcripts are can really depend on things like sound quality, accents, background noise, or how technical the language is. You’ll usually get better results with clear audio and simple speech than with muffled sound or lots of jargon.
The good news is that you don't need external tools or special software. YouTube makes transcripts available directly through its platform on both mobile and desktop.
Here’s how to get them, whether you’re browsing on your phone, laptop, or home computer:
There’s a big restriction. The mobile app doesn't allow you to copy the entire transcript at once. You'll need to manually write down any text you want to save, or switch to a desktop browser for full copy-paste functionality.
Getting transcripts on a computer allows you to copy the entire text. Here’s how to do it:
YouTube includes timestamps by default, which you can delete manually if you don't need them.
Overchat AI Summarizer makes it easy to get the main ideas from a YouTube video without having to read the entire transcript.
The tool is straightforward to use. You paste a YouTube link and receive an instant summary that distills the video's main ideas into digestible sections.
Using the tool is simple:
Done! In just a few seconds, you’ll see a summary that captures the video’s main takeaways.
This saves a lot of time when you just need quick insights instead of a full transcript. It’s especially handy for research, content curation, or deciding whether a long video is worth watching all the way through.
Open the video on YouTube and click …more under the description. Then select Show transcript. The transcript will appear next to the video on desktop, or below it on mobile, complete with timestamps for each line of dialogue.
YouTube doesn’t offer a direct download option, but you can easily copy and paste the text. On desktop, highlight the transcript, right-click, and choose Copy — then paste it into Word, Google Docs, or any text editor.
It depends. Automatic transcripts can vary in accuracy based on audio quality, accents, background noise, and how technical the language is. Manually uploaded transcripts, on the other hand, are usually much more reliable since they’re reviewed by humans.
Yes! In the YouTube mobile app, tap More below the video title, scroll down, and select Show transcript. Just note that the mobile app makes it harder to copy text — you may need to jot down key parts or switch to a desktop browser for easier copying.
Captions appear directly on the video while it’s playing, showing the text in sync with the audio. Transcripts, however, display all the dialogue at once in a scrollable format with timestamps, so you can read or search through the entire video without watching it.
