How to Download YouTube Transcripts & Subtitles

Published April 4, 2026 · Y2Buddy Team

Need the text from a YouTube video? Whether you're a student taking notes, a researcher citing sources, a content creator repurposing material, or someone who prefers reading over watching — downloading a YouTube transcript saves hours of manual work.

What Is a YouTube Transcript?

A transcript is the full text of everything spoken in a video. YouTube auto-generates captions for most videos using speech recognition. These captions can be extracted as plain text — that's your transcript.

How to Extract a YouTube Transcript with Y2Buddy

Step 1: Copy the Video URL

Go to YouTube and find the video. Copy the URL from your browser's address bar.

Step 2: Open the Transcript Tool

Visit y2buddy.com/transcript and paste the URL into the input field.

Step 3: Click Extract

Hit the button and Y2Buddy will pull the captions from the video. This takes just a few seconds.

Step 4: Copy or Use the Text

The full transcript appears on the page. You can copy it to your clipboard, paste it into a document, or use it however you need.

Common Uses for YouTube Transcripts

• Study Notes — Extract lecture transcripts to review material without re-watching.
• Blog Posts — Turn video content into written articles or summaries.
• Research — Get exact quotes from interviews or presentations.
• Accessibility — Read content that's easier to process as text.
• Translation — Get the English text, then translate to your language.
• SEO — Create text versions of your own video content for search engines.

When Transcripts Aren't Available

Not every YouTube video has captions. Transcripts work when:

• The uploader has added manual captions
• YouTube has auto-generated captions (most English videos)

If a video has captions disabled by the uploader, the transcript cannot be extracted. You'll see an error message in that case.

Transcript vs. Audio Download

Need the audio file instead of text? Use the Y2Buddy MP3 Converter to download the audio as an MP3 file. Both tools are free and work instantly.