How to Get a Transcript of a YouTube Video (2026): Every Free Method

The fastest way to get a transcript of a YouTube video on a computer: click the three-dot menu under the video, hit Show transcript, and the full text opens in a panel on the right. That covers most people in about five seconds. On a phone it's messier, and if you want the transcript as an actual file you can edit, there's a step the help pages skip. Here's all of it, free.

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The Desktop Method (5 Seconds)

On a laptop or desktop, in a browser:

1. Open the video.
2. Click the three-dot menu (the "..." or "More") just under the video title. On some layouts you expand the description first, then scroll to the bottom.
3. Click Show transcript.
4. A panel opens on the right with the full text, timestamped. It scrolls along with the video, and clicking any line jumps the video to that moment.

To get rid of the timestamps, click the three-dot menu at the top of that transcript panel and choose Toggle timestamps. That leaves you clean text you can select and copy.

One catch worth knowing: this works when the video has captions, either ones the creator uploaded or the automatic ones YouTube generates. Almost every video has the automatic kind, so you'll rarely hit a wall, but the auto ones make mistakes on names and slang that you'll want to fix after.

The Mobile Catch: No "Show Transcript" Button

Here's the part that sends people in circles: on the YouTube phone app the Show transcript option is buried at the bottom of the video's description, not in a menu, so most people never find it and assume it's missing. It's usually there, just hidden: tap to expand the description and scroll all the way down. On some versions it doesn't appear at all, which is why the browser method below is the reliable one.

The reliable fix on a phone is to skip the app. Open your phone's browser, go to the video, and either use the desktop steps above (request the desktop site if needed) or paste the video link into a transcript tool. That's almost always faster than fighting the app.

How to Download the Transcript (TXT or SRT)

Copying text out of the transcript panel is fine for a quick grab. But YouTube has no Download transcript button, so if you want a clean text or subtitle file, to repurpose into a blog post, feed to an AI, or hand to an editor, you use a dedicated tool.

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A transcript tool takes the video link or file and gives you the text as a downloadable file, usually TXT or SRT. Here's which format to pick:

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Why Bother With the Transcript at All

For a creator, the transcript is reuse. One long video already holds a blog post, a week of captions, a newsletter, and the script for three Shorts, but only if the words are in text you can work with. Pulling the transcript is the first move in turning one upload into a week of content instead of letting it sit. If that's where you're headed, the best AI tools for repurposing long videos covers the next step. And if your goal is captions on the video rather than a text file, how to add captions to TikTok videos is the companion.