YouTube to Text
Turn any YouTube video into plain text you can copy, search, and paste anywhere. Free and instant.
Free · No sign-up · Works on any public YouTube video
Video in, plain text out
Text is portable in a way video is not. Once a video is text you can search it, quote it, translate it, drop it into an AI tool, or keep it in your notes without needing the video again.
This tool gives you exactly that: the spoken content of the video as ordinary text, with timestamps you can strip out or keep.
Paste-anywhere output
Ordinary text with no proprietary formatting — it lands cleanly in Docs, Notion, Obsidian, or a chat box.
Feed it to any AI
A full transcript is the ideal input for ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini when you want your own custom analysis.
Searchable instantly
Find a single sentence in a three-hour video without touching the scrubber.
How to convert a YouTube video to text
- 1
Grab the link
Copy the URL of the YouTube video you want as text.
- 2
Paste and convert
Drop it into the box above and run it. The text is extracted from the video's captions.
- 3
Copy it out
Take the text into your notes, a document, or an AI assistant.
Common uses
Anyone using AI tools
Give ChatGPT or Claude the full transcript and ask it whatever you actually want to know.
Creators
Mine podcasts and interviews for quotes, scripts, and references, or repurpose your own videos into blog posts and show notes.
Students
Turn a two-hour lecture into text you can search, quote, and revise from — far faster than scrubbing the video for one definition.
Professionals
Catch up on webinars, earnings calls, and industry talks by reading the transcript in a few minutes instead of blocking out an hour.
YouTube to text FAQ
How do I convert a YouTube video to text?
Paste the video link above. The spoken content is extracted from the video's caption track and shown as plain, copyable text.
Can I remove the timestamps?
Yes. The timestamps are part of the displayed text, so you can copy the portion you want and drop them if you prefer clean prose.
Is the text accurate?
It reflects the video's captions. Creator-written captions are typically very accurate; YouTube's automatic captions are good but can misread names, jargon, and heavy accents.
Do I need an account or an extension?
No. Transcripts here are free with no sign-up. The free JumpWatch Chrome extension adds AI summaries and chat directly on the YouTube page if you want them.
Get AI summaries and chat on every video
The transcript is free here. Add the free JumpWatch extension to summarize and chat with any video without leaving YouTube.
Add to Chrome — FreeOr browse recent transcripts.