From video to usable text, in one paste
Video is great for watching and terrible for working with. You can't skim it, quote it, or paste it into a document. Converting a YouTube video to text fixes that: the whole video becomes something you can read in a fraction of the runtime, search for the one sentence you need, and reuse in your own writing.
Two views, depending on the job
The timestamped view keeps every line tied to its moment in the video, which is right for checking quotes and jumping the player around. The plain-text view merges the lines into readable paragraphs, which is right for pasting into notes, documents, or a blog draft. Both views come from the same text, so you can flip between them at any time, and the copy and download buttons always export whichever version suits the task.
Text that stays faithful to the video
The text comes from the video's own captions: the subtitles the creator uploaded when they exist, or YouTube's auto-generated captions otherwise. Nothing is paraphrased or summarized behind your back; what was said is what you get. For auto-generated captions that arrive without proper sentences, the optional "Fix punctuation" checkbox tidies the punctuation and capitalization while leaving every word exactly as it was spoken.
What people turn videos into
Blog posts and newsletters built on a talk the author already gave. Study notes from lectures, with the searchable text standing in for scrubbing through hours of playback. Meeting-style minutes from recorded webinars. Quotes for articles, with timestamps to prove them. If the end product is words on a page, converting the video to text is the first step, and it takes about five seconds here.
Need subtitle files instead of plain text? Use the YouTube subtitle downloader to export SRT and VTT with exact cue timings, or read about everything the tool does on the home page.
YouTube to text: common questions
How do I convert a YouTube video to text?
Copy the video link from YouTube, paste it into the box above, and the spoken words appear as text on this page within seconds. Switch to the plain-text view for clean paragraphs without timestamps, then copy the text or download it as a .txt file.
Is converting YouTube to text free?
Yes, completely. There is no account, no trial, no watermark, and no cap on the number or length of videos. The text comes from the captions YouTube publishes for each video, so serving it costs almost nothing.
Can I turn a YouTube video into a blog post or article?
That is one of the most common uses. Convert the video to text, copy the plain-text version, and edit it into your draft. The "Copy for AI" option also wraps the text in a ready-made prompt, so an AI assistant can produce a first draft, a summary, or key points for you.
Does it work for videos in other languages?
Yes. If the video has caption tracks in other languages, the language picker above the text switches between all of them, including YouTube’s auto-generated tracks.