Free YouTube tool
Video to Text
Convert video into clean, timestamped text you can search, quote, and paste anywhere. Free, no sign-up.
Free · No sign-up · Requires retrievable captions
Text is the useful format
Once a video's captions are text, you can search them, trace candidate quotes, translate them, give them to an AI, or keep them as a reference. Verify important passages against the video.
Paste a YouTube link above and the spoken content comes back as ordinary text with timestamps. Nothing to install, no account.
Uses existing captions
Requests the existing caption track rather than re-processing audio. Timing varies with caption availability and upstream conditions.
Clean output
Formatted for reading, with timestamps you can keep or strip.
Goes anywhere
Plain text pastes cleanly into documents, notes apps, translation tools, and AI chats.
How to convert video to text
- 1
Copy the video URL
Take the link to the YouTube video you want as text.
- 2
Paste and convert
Drop it into the box above and run the conversion.
- 3
Use the text
Copy it into notes, a document, a translation tool, or an AI assistant.
Common uses
Writers
Find candidate quotes in a talk or interview, then verify them against the video before publishing.
Accessibility
Offer a readable alternative for anyone who cannot watch the video.
Students
Turn a long lecture into text you can search, quote, and revise from without scrubbing the video for one definition.
Creators
Mine podcasts and interviews for quotes, scripts, and references, or repurpose your own videos into blog posts and show notes.
Video to text FAQ
How do I convert a video to text?
Paste the YouTube link above. The spoken content is extracted from the video's caption track and returned as timestamped text.
Is it free?
Yes, and no account is required.
Can I convert a video file from my computer?
Not currently. The tool works from YouTube links, reading the caption track that already exists for the video.
Do I need an account or an extension?
No account or extension is required for the public transcript tool, which is free and subject to rate and capacity limits. The JumpWatch Chrome extension is free to install; its AI summaries and chat require sign-in and follow your account's plan limits.
Keep the context
Take transcripts, summaries, and Ask onto YouTube.
Add the free extension for transcript search and assistant handoffs. Premium adds server-powered Brief and Ask on the video page.
Add to Chrome — FreeOr browse recent transcripts.