---
title: "How to Get the Transcript of a YouTube Video"
description: "How to get the transcript of a YouTube video on a phone or computer: Show transcript, in the description. With no captions, the words come from the audio."
canonical: "https://transcript.im/blog/how-to-get-youtube-transcript"
markdown: "https://transcript.im/blog/how-to-get-youtube-transcript.md"
author: "Leo"
category: "YouTube"
datePublished: "2026-10-02T18:53:29.000Z"
dateModified: "2026-10-03T03:29:32.090Z"
---
To get the transcript of a YouTube video, open the video and choose **Show transcript** inside the description. YouTube's own [help page on viewing transcripts](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/15930243) says this works for any video that already has captions: the transcript scrolls with playback, and you tap a line to jump to that moment. If the description is fully open and **Show transcript** is not there, the video has no caption track, so the panel has nothing to show. In that case you get the words by transcribing the audio instead of waiting for a button that will not appear.

The rest of this page is the same job split by where you are. The phone app and the desktop site both put the control in the description, not in the three-dot menu under the player. A third path is for videos with no captions, or for anyone who needs a file rather than a panel that only scrolls beside the player.

## On the YouTube mobile app

On a phone, start in the YouTube app, on the watch page, not in an embedded player. Embedded players on other sites often hide the description, so the transcript control never shows up there.

![A phone showing a YouTube video with the expanded description and the Show transcript button](/images/blog/how-to-get-youtube-transcript/b7f6a914.jpg)

1. Open the video in the YouTube app.
2. Expand the description. On many phones that means tapping the title, or a **…more** control under the title. The exact control changes with the app version, so open the description fully before you decide the transcript is missing.
3. Scroll through the expanded description until you see **Show transcript**.
4. Tap **Show transcript**. Lines of caption text appear, and the current line follows the video.
5. Tap any line to jump the video to that moment. YouTube's help article documents that jump: the line is the caption text, and tapping it seeks the player.

That is the whole official path. There is no separate "download transcript" button in this flow. The panel is for reading along and for finding a moment. If you need the wording later, you are reading it in the app, not saving a document.

A few things that look like a transcript are not one. Auto-generated captions burned into the picture, creator-typed on-screen text, and the description itself are not the transcript panel. Chapters, when the video has them, can show up near the same description area, and YouTube also surfaces people, places, and products there on some videos. Those are navigation aids. The transcript is the sequence of caption lines.

If you expand the description and still cannot find **Show transcript**, stop hunting through Share, Settings, or the player overflow menu. The current YouTube Help article puts the control in the description, and it only exists when the video has captions. Older walkthroughs that tell you to open the three dots under the Like button are describing a layout YouTube has moved away from.

## On the YouTube desktop site

On a computer, the same control sits in the description, in a wider layout.

![A laptop showing a YouTube video beside a transcript panel with timestamped lines](/images/blog/how-to-get-youtube-transcript/91721e68.jpg)

1. Open the video on youtube.com in a desktop browser. A video opened inside another site's embed is a worse place to look, because the description may be collapsed or absent.
2. Under the title, expand the description if it is collapsed. The collapsed state is the short preview; **Show transcript** sits in the full description, often toward the bottom of that block.
3. Click **Show transcript**. YouTube then shows the caption text and keeps the current line in view as the video plays.
4. Click a line to move the playhead to that part of the video.

When captions already exist, you can read the transcript without leaving the watch page. The panel sits beside the video or below it, depending on the window width. You do not need to turn captions on in the player for the transcript to open. Captions are the timed track the transcript is built from. The transcript is the readable list of those lines. Turning the caption overlay on or off only changes what is drawn on the picture.

People often ask how to get a transcript of a YouTube video and then try to select every line by hand. On desktop, you can sometimes drag across the text in the panel the way you would select any web page. That is a manual copy of whatever the browser lets you highlight. It is not an export, it does not produce an SRT or VTT file, and on a long video it is easy to miss lines or to keep the timestamps in a messy paste. Treat that as a fallback for a short quote, not as the way to keep the whole video.

Searching inside YouTube's panel is also limited to what the panel itself offers in your current layout. If you cannot find a search field, do not assume you missed a hidden command. The documented actions are: open the transcript from the description, read the scrolling lines, and click a line to jump. Anything beyond that, including a clean file, is outside the official panel.

## With a third-party transcript tool

Use YouTube's panel when it is there and all you need is to read along. Leave it when the panel is missing, when the video is long enough that selecting lines by hand will waste the afternoon, or when the next step needs a real file. A [YouTube transcript generator](/youtube-transcript) is the path for that second job: you already have the link, and you want the spoken words as text you can search, quote, and keep.

On transcript.im the steps are short because the input is the public video link.

1. Copy the public YouTube URL from Share, or from the address bar on desktop.
2. Paste that link into transcript.im. A private video, a deleted video, or a link that only works while you are logged into someone else's account is not a public link, so this path does not cover it.
3. The tool reads the creator's caption track when one exists. When the video has no captions, it transcribes the spoken audio instead. Either way the result is timestamped lines aligned to what was said.
4. Read the text in the browser, search for a phrase, and jump by timestamp. You can also run Summary, Core Points, or MindMap on that same text if you want the structure before you read every line.
5. Export TXT, SRT, or VTT, or translate the lines into another supported language with the timestamps kept in place.

That is a different job from a [YouTube subtitle downloader](/youtube-subtitle-downloader), which saves the caption file the video already had, usually SRT or VTT for a player. This article is about getting the words of the video. When captions exist, those words can start from the caption track. When they do not, they have to come from the audio. The generator's job is the full text, not a copy of the video file and not a replacement for YouTube's chapter list.

Doing this for several links is the same idea repeated: one public URL in, one transcript out. You still open YouTube's own panel first if you only need to check a single sentence while the video is on screen. The tool earns its place when the panel cannot answer, or when the text has to leave YouTube.

## When captions are off

YouTube's help text is explicit: you can see the full transcript of any video that has captions. The reverse is the case people get stuck on. No captions means no **Show transcript** control, on the phone and on the desktop site. Refreshing, switching from the app to the mobile browser, or asking for the desktop site does not create a caption track that was never there.

![Three steps for a video without captions: paste the link, the audio is transcribed, and timestamped lines come back](/images/blog/how-to-get-youtube-transcript/6b97254d.jpg)

Captions are off for ordinary reasons. The creator never added them. YouTube did not generate them for that upload. The video is mostly music, or the speech is in a language that was not captioned. None of those cases puts a hidden transcript behind another menu. If the description is open and the control is absent, you have confirmed the official path is finished.

In that situation the words have to come from transcribing the speech. transcript.im does that after it checks for a caption track: no track, then the spoken audio is transcribed, and the lines come back with timestamps. The text follows the audio, so the quality of the recording is the limit. Noise, background music, people talking at the same time, and a muffled lapel mic all show up as weaker text. Names and jargon are the usual misses. Read the line against the timestamp before you quote it.

A video that is members-only, deleted, or not publicly reachable will not open from a pasted public link. Age-restricted or region-limited playback can fail the same way. There is no setting in the transcript tool that overrides a video YouTube will not serve to the public.

Auto-captions, when they do exist, are still captions. **Show transcript** will open them, and they are only as good as YouTube's captioning of that video. Using them through the panel is fine for reading along. Using them as a finished quotation, a subtitle file, or a translation is where you want the text out of the panel so you can correct a line and keep the timestamp next to it.

## Downloading and reusing the transcript

"Downloading" here means keeping the words, not keeping the video. YouTube's panel does not offer a TXT, SRT, or VTT export in the help article that documents **Show transcript**. Saving the video, or saving an MP3 of the audio, is a different task and does not hand you a transcript.

Once you have the text from a tool, pick the file by what you will do next.

| Next step | File | Why this one |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Read, quote, or paste into notes | TXT | Plain words you can drop into a document |
| Caption an edit in a video editor | SRT | Timed cues with a start and an end |
| Caption a web player | VTT | Timed cues in WebVTT |
| Read it in another language | Translated lines, timestamps kept | The timing stays with the words |
| Skim a long talk before you read it | Summary, Core Points, or MindMap | Same transcript, shorter view of the structure |

Reuse is ordinary work, not a new project. A student copies one definition and the timestamp into notes, then jumps back only if the line looks wrong. A reporter searches for the claim instead of scrubbing the playhead. A creator exports SRT or VTT and drops that file into an editor for their own cut. Someone who already works in Google NotebookLM, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Kimi, or Manus pastes the transcript in as the source text, because those tools read text and do not watch the video for you.

Two habits keep the text trustworthy. Keep the timestamp next to any line you quote, so you can reopen the video at that second. And do not treat a transcript of a noisy clip as a finished caption file until you have read it. SRT and VTT will happily carry a wrong word into an editor.

If the official panel is enough, stay there: description, **Show transcript**, tap a line. If you need the words when captions are off, or you need a file you can search and reuse, [get the full transcript of any YouTube video](/youtube-transcript) from the public link and export TXT, SRT, or VTT from the result.