WatchToText
WatchToText pulls the transcript of a public YouTube video from a pasted link. Copy the text or download TXT, SRT or VTT, free and with no sign-up.
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A closer look at WatchToText
A free tool that turns a public YouTube link into a transcript you can copy or download as TXT, SRT or VTT.
The one remark you remember from a long video
You watched a long talk and now you want to quote one remark from it, or you need the words of a video without sitting through it again. Scrubbing back and forth to find a sentence gets old fast. WatchToText is a free tool for exactly that. Paste a YouTube link, a Shorts link or a video ID, and it asks YouTube for that video's caption track and shows it as paragraphs.
You can switch on timestamps, copy the text, or download a TXT file for reading or SRT and VTT files for subtitles. It only works when the video has captions. For YouTube links, the site's terms say it never touches the video's audio, so a video with no caption track gives it nothing to return.
Beyond YouTube
The same site handles TikTok and Instagram links, and the method differs there. When a video has no captions, the site fetches it, keeps only the audio and runs speech recognition on that. You can also upload your own file, up to 20 minutes and 200 MB. The accepted formats are MP3, M4A and WAV, plus MP4, MOV and WebM.
According to the privacy policy, uploaded files and their transcripts aren't stored, and audio fetched from TikTok or Instagram isn't kept after processing. Transcripts of public videos may be cached for up to 24 hours.
A few things to know first
That privacy policy, last updated November 2, 2026, is unusually specific about how the site reaches YouTube. If YouTube refuses the first request for a caption track, the site may retry through a relay server it runs on Vultr, which sends the request through an ISP proxy operated by IPRoyal. Fetching captions this way can conflict with a platform's terms of service. The site's own terms add that it isn't affiliated with YouTube, Google, TikTok or Instagram, and that you must comply with the source platform's terms.
Transcripts are free with no sign-up, and the site carries Google AdSense ads. Its pricing page has credit packs, 100 transcripts for $4.99 and 250 for $9.99, for YouTube videos that have captions but block the free reader. Those packs were marked "Coming soon" on November 11, 2026. The site is run by the team behind the WatchToText name, per its about page, and doesn't publish personal names or addresses.
If you often want to quote a talk or search a long video for one line, it's worth a bookmark.
Project note details
Dates and editorial links
Published
November 11, 2026
Updated
November 12, 2026
Note history
Publication and substantive update dates for this public note.
- Nov 11, 2026
- Project note published.
- Nov 12, 2026
- Project note updated.
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