YouTubeForge
Get a YouTube transcript from any public video
Transcribe a YouTube video from the captions YouTube already published. Paste a public link, search the lines, then copy the text or download TXT, SRT, or VTT. No account.
How it works
Paste the link
A watch URL, Shorts, youtu.be, or the video id. No account. Transcribe means we read YouTube’s public caption track — we do not invent speech from the audio.
Read the transcript
Search lines, skip the intro, and click a cue to jump the video. Copy the text or download TXT, Markdown, SRT, or VTT.
Stay on this video
The result URL uses ?v= and mode=text (not indexed). Subtitles, translation, a recap, and audio stay on that same page.
Other jobs on the same video
Audio, translation, a chapter recap, or a subtitle file — same paste box, after the transcript.
YouTube to text
Searchable transcript from public captions. Quotes, notes, timestamps.
YouTube to MP3
Soundtrack only. MP3 by default, or M4A, Opus, WAV.
Translate captions
YouTube tlang keeps cue times. Not a paragraph dump into a chat.
Chapter summary
Extractive recap from the captions, plus a prompt for your own model.
Download YouTube subtitles
SRT or VTT from the same captions, for a player or an editor.
Chrome extension
On a YouTube watch page, grab captions in your browser and open them here — useful when this server is rate-limited.
Guides
Short pages for the searches people type — then the same paste box.
How to get a transcript from any YouTube video
Paste a public link, transcribe from the captions, then copy or download.
How to see the transcript on YouTube
Show transcript on desktop and phone, and what to do when the button is missing.
SRT vs VTT
Which subtitle file to download for editors vs the web.
YouTube MP3 guide
Save the soundtrack when you need audio, not text.
FAQ
Is YouTubeForge free to use?
Yes. No account, no sign-up. Public YouTube captions are extracted as-is. Ads may appear around the tool.
How do I access the transcript after generating it?
Every result lives on the home URL with v= and mode=text. Optional query params: lang, tlang, and mode (audio, translate, summary, srt). Those URLs are noindex.
How do I transcribe a YouTube video?
Paste a public link. YouTubeForge loads the caption track and shows it as text. It does not run speech-to-text on the audio. No captions means no transcript.
Can I download the transcript?
Yes. TXT, SRT, VTT, Markdown, or JSON — use the transcript download page when the file is the whole job. Copy and Copy Markdown work on the result too.
Is there a limit to the length of the video?
Captions have no extra length cap. Video: about 4 hours at 360p, 3 hours at 480p, 90 min at 720p, 60 min at 1080p+. Audio: about 3 hours.