If a YouTube video has captions — either authored by the creator or generated by YouTube — the full subtitle track is sitting right there, waiting. This tool extracts it and hands you the file in the format you actually need: SRT for video editors and VLC, VTT for web players, or plain TXT for reading and pasting into documents.
Why download the actual subtitle track?
Re-typing or “transcribing” a video gives you an approximation. The caption track is the source of truth: it is word-for-word what the video says, with frame-accurate start times. If the track exists, downloading it beats any other method — it is faster, exact, and free.
Formats explained
| Format | Use it for | Example |
|---|---|---|
.srt | Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, OBS, VLC, hard-burning subs | 1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,500
Hello world |
.vtt | HTML5 video players, web embeds | 00:00.000 --> 00:00.005
Hello world |
.txt | Reading, notes, feeding into LLMs or translation tools | [00:01] Hello world |
.csv | Spreadsheets, research, data pipelines — index, start_s, end_s, text | 1,1.000,3.500,Hello world |
Bilingual .srt | Language learning — original line under the translation | Hello world
Hei maailma |
What if the video has no subtitles?
Not every video has a caption track. In that case this tool falls back to AI transcription: it processes the audio with a Whisper-class speech model and builds a brand-new subtitle file for you. Same output formats, same timings — the file is simply generated instead of extracted.
What if I want the subtitles in another language?
Combine with the transcript translator to get the subtitle track in any of 100+ languages, then download it as SRT or VTT and drop it into your player or editor.
How to use
- Copy the YouTube URL (or bare 11-character video ID).
- Paste it into the tool and press Extract.
- Choose SRT, VTT, or TXT and download. Done.
Notes
- Only public videos can be processed. Age-restricted or private videos are not accessible.
- Subtitle files belong to the video creator; use them in line with YouTube's Terms of Service and copyright law.