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YouTube transcripts

Paste a YouTube link and read the video's full transcript: the caption track YouTube publishes for it, unchanged, with the word count, the runtime, and a download in .txt or .md.

Any YouTube video link works: watch, youtu.be, Shorts, live, or embed.

Writing your own video? Check the script before you record: free, and it marks the passages most likely to lose attention.

What these pages are

Each transcript lives at its own address, /youtube-transcript/<video id>, and holds the video's own published captions: the same text the video's owner published, or the one YouTube generated automatically, depending on the video. Every page names which of the two it is showing and links back to the video. The captions are not Prepublish's writing: nothing here is re-transcribed, tidied up, or generated. If a video has no caption track, no page is written for it.

A channel can ask for its transcripts to be removed through the contact page, and they are.

How to get one

  • Paste a link. Any YouTube video link works: a watch URL, a youtu.be short link, a Shorts or live URL, or the bare 11-character video id. The box above routes to that video's page.
  • Or open the address directly. Take the id out of any YouTube URL and put it after /youtube-transcript/.
  • Or from YouTube itself. The Prepublish Chrome extension adds a Script button under the player on a watch page; it opens this page for the video you are already watching.

No account is needed and nothing is uploaded: the transcript is read from YouTube, cached, and shown. The first visit to a video takes a moment; after that the page is instant.

All transcripts, page 5 of 66

The whole transcript list, page 5, newest stored first.

Working on your own script instead?

Prepublish reviews your draft before you record it: hook strength, pacing, and the passages most likely to lose viewers, with copy-paste rewrites.

Check a script freeSee all free tools

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