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).

Can I download the transcript?

Yes. Download TXT, SRT, VTT, Markdown with timestamp links, or JSON from the transcript download page. Copy and Copy Markdown are also available.

How do I transcribe a YouTube video?

Paste a public watch link, Short, or youtu.be URL. YouTubeForge loads the caption track YouTube already published and shows it as searchable text. It does not run speech-to-text on the audio.

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.

Chrome

YouTube transcript extension for Chrome

On a YouTube watch page, grab public captions in your browser and open them on YouTubeForge — searchable text, SRT, or audio next. Useful when the website’s server is rate-limited and your laptop is not.

The Web Store listing is not public yet. Load the unpacked folder from the GitHub repo (extension/) in chrome://extensions with Developer mode on.

extension/ on GitHub

What you get

Watch page button
Get transcript fetches captions in the tab, sends them to YouTubeForge, then opens /?v= with the text ready.
Toolbar click
If the tab is a YouTube video, same flow. Otherwise it opens the home paste box.
Same tools after
From the result: copy, download SRT/VTT, translate captions, or save MP3 — no second paste.

Install tips

Pin the extension after install. Use it on public videos that already have captions (human or auto). Private or age-gated videos usually cannot expose caption tracks.

Paste a link on the web YouTube to text Guides

YouTube transcript extension for Chrome

What you get

Watch page button

Toolbar click

Same tools after

Install tips