TranscriptYTHow to get the transcript of a lecture
- 1
Copy the lecture link
From YouTube, your course page's embedded video, or a university channel. Paste a playlist link to pick a lecture from a whole course.
- 2
Paste it and get the transcript
Every sentence appears with its timestamp, so you can find any point in the lecture.
- 3
Study from it
Search for a term, open the Notes tab for AI study notes, or download the text for your own notes app.
Search a lecture instead of rewatching it
Before an exam, search the transcript for the term you need and click the line to hear the explanation again. It is much faster than scrubbing through a 90-minute recording.
Notes you can trust
Copy the professor's exact wording for definitions and arguments instead of paraphrasing from memory. Download the transcript as Markdown for Notion or Obsidian, or as PDF to print and annotate.
Lectures in a second language
International students can read the transcript at their own pace, look up words, and switch on a translation line by line under the original.
Need more?
Need transcripts at scale? Use the API
The same transcripts are available through the YouTube Transcript API: timestamped JSON, text, SRT, VTT, CSV, or Markdown, 150+ languages, and AI transcription for videos without captions. Or connect the YouTube MCP server to Claude, Cursor, or Codex and just paste links in chat.
curl "https://transcript-yt.com/v1/transcript?url=5f3Pn-N6yLc&format=text" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ts_live_..."
Common questions
Can I get transcripts of a whole course?
Paste the course playlist's link and pick each lecture from the list. To download every lecture at once, the API returns up to 500 transcripts in one request, depending on plan.
Are lecture transcripts accurate?
Lectures recorded with a good microphone usually have accurate auto-captions. Technical terms and names can be misspelled, so check formulas and definitions against the slides.
Can I turn a lecture into study notes?
Yes. After the transcript loads, open the Notes tab for headings, bullet points, and timestamps written from the lecture.
Can I get a lecture transcript in another language?
Yes. Pick any caption track the lecture has, or translate the transcript into 150+ languages and read it line by line with the original.
What if the lecture has no captions?
The free tool reads the captions YouTube already has, creator-uploaded or auto-generated, and most videos with speech have them. For a video with no captions at all, click Transcribe the audio with AI: it's on paid plans and credit packs, at 1 credit per minute.