Frequently asked questions

Any shape of YouTube link: a normal watch URL, a youtu.be short link, a /shorts/ link, an /embed/ link, or one with a timestamp and playlist attached. Extra query parameters are ignored. A bare 11-character video id works too.

Usually a second or two. We are reading a text file the platform already has, not listening to the video, so the length of the video barely affects how long it takes.

Three hours. Longer videos are refused before anything is fetched, with a clear message rather than a hang.

The video genuinely has no caption track. This is common on very recent uploads — YouTube's automatic captions can take minutes or hours to appear. Try again later, or try a different video to confirm the tool is working.

Private, unlisted, deleted, region-blocked or age-restricted videos cannot be read. We can only see what a signed-out browser can see.

YouTube rate-limits the machines it does not recognise, and our server sits in a data centre. This usually clears by itself within a minute. Behind the scenes the tool tries several ways of asking before it gives up.

You have hit the per-IP rate limit. It refills continuously — waiting about a minute is enough.

The line above the transcript says so. Auto-generated tracks are marked, and they are the ones to check before quoting: they drop punctuation and mangle names, numbers and technical terms.

Click its timestamp. The player jumps to that moment and the line highlights as it plays, so checking a quote takes a few seconds.

Only mechanically: whitespace is collapsed, empty cues are dropped, exact duplicate lines from scrolling captions are merged, and end times are repaired when the source leaves them missing or backwards. The words themselves are never changed.

Nothing. No account, no trial, no per-download charge. Adverts below the tool pay for the servers.

No. The transcript is fetched, sent to your browser and forgotten. Copies and downloads are built in your browser from what is already on screen, with no second request to us.

The text belongs to whoever owns the video. Quoting with attribution, studying and accessibility uses are generally fine; republishing a whole transcript as your own content is not. When in doubt, ask the creator.