As is known, videos on topics of general interest are published on YouTube, including journalistic interviews, conferences, documentaries, podcasts, etc., many of them with great academic value, which is why they are viewed repeatedly and downloaded to also view them offline.
The good news is that many of these videos have automatically generated transcripts that are displayed in the form of subtitles, making it easier for people with hearing problems to view what is being expressed orally. However, these transcripts can also be used by users of all conditions. For example, to edit them, translate them into another language, publish them as text, among other possibilities.
YouTube allows access to complete transcripts to have better control over playback or to do with them what is best for the user: copy them, for example. But there are also third-party tools that make it easier to obtain them, downloading their content in editable text formats. We show you these two methods below.
Copy subtitles from YouTube
Go to YouTube on your PC and view the video whose subtitles you want to extract.
Check that you have auto-generated or author-added subtitles by clicking the CC icon. After this, go to the video description (below the playback window) and click Show transcript.
The complete transcript will appear in a side panel along with the respective timelines. To remove these items, click the menu icon and select Turn Timestamps On/Off.
Finally, copy the entire transcript and paste it into your favorite text editor to remove line breaks.
Use third-party tools to download YouTube subtitles
Go to YouTube and open the video whose subtitles you want to download. Copy its URL that appears in the browser’s address bar.
Now go to the DownSub page. Then paste the copied URL into the blank box at the top of the page and click Download.
Click on the text format in which the subtitles will be downloaded (SRT or TXT). To finish, confirm the operation by clicking Save. The YouTube video subtitles will be downloaded to your hard drive.