Video Transcript Generator
Paste a video link — YouTube, TikTok or Instagram — and read every word, timestamped. Free, no sign-up to start.
- Free to try — no sign-up needed
- Summaries in 14 languages
- Summary, transcript, mind map & Q&A
Try it on a popular video
No link handy? Jump straight into one of these.
But What Is a Neural Network?
3Blue1Brown's classic visual intro to deep learning.
Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator
Tim Urban's TED talk on why we procrastinate.
Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Address
The 2005 speech on life, death, and following your passion.
How Great Leaders Inspire Action
Simon Sinek's TED talk on the Golden Circle.
One Link In, A Full Text Workspace Out
A transcript on its own is a wall of words. What comes back here is the wall plus everything that makes it usable, and the raw transcript is always underneath when you need the exact wording.
- YouTube — read from the platform's own captions, so a two-hour lecture is as fast as a two-minute clip. 2 videos a day as a guest, up to 15 minutes each, no account needed.
- TikTok and Instagram — no captions exist, so the audio is transcribed by AI and billed per minute. A free account is required, and clips are capped shorter.
- Every line carries the second it was spoken, and clicking it jumps the video there.
- No file upload — everything starts from a public URL.
Knowing which of those two paths a video took matters, because it sets what to expect from the text. Captions a creator wrote or reviewed read cleanly. Auto-generated captions and AI transcription both handle clear speech well, and both stumble on proper nouns, heavy accents and crosstalk.
There is one thing this tool deliberately does not do: it will not take a video file off your hard drive. Everything starts from a public URL. If your video lives in a folder rather than on a platform, this is not the right tool, and it is better to know that now than after uploading.
This generator works from a link, not a file upload: copy the URL of a public video and the spoken content comes back as text you can read, search and quote, with a timestamp on every line. What it costs you, and how accurate it is, depends on which platform the video lives on.
From Link to Transcript in Three Steps
About thirty seconds. No account needed for short YouTube videos.
Copy the video URL
A YouTube watch or youtu.be link, a TikTok video or short link, or an Instagram Reel or post link. The video has to be public.
Paste it into the box above
YouTube works as a guest, 2 videos a day up to 15 minutes each. TikTok and Instagram need a free sign-in because their audio is transcribed by AI.
Read, search, or export
The transcript opens alongside chapters, a summary and a mind map. Copy any part, download it as Markdown, or send the whole thing to Obsidian or Notion.
Where a Transcript Saves the Most Time
Anything you would otherwise scrub back and forth through, looking for the one thing you half remember hearing.
Finding the exact quote
You remember a speaker saying something useful about forty minutes in, but not the wording. Searching the transcript takes a second; dragging the playhead back and forth takes ten minutes and usually overshoots.
Writing up a recorded talk
Conference talks and webinars uploaded to YouTube become quotable source material. The timestamps mean every quote you lift can carry a reference back to the second it was said.
Following instructions you can't pause fast enough
Recipes, commands, part numbers and settings go by faster than you can copy them. Having the text open next to the video means reading them instead of scrubbing back three times.
Reading in a language you prefer
The transcript stays in the original language, but the summary, chapters and key points can be generated in any of the supported output languages — so an English lecture can be summarized in yours.
Getting short-form content into notes
A TikTok or Reel that explains something worth keeping is hard to file — you cannot search a video in your notes app. Transcribed, it becomes a paragraph you can paste, tag and find again.
Built for Long Videos, Not Just Clips
The length ladder is the whole point — most free tools stop at a few minutes.
Timestamps on every line
The transcript is not a single block of text. Every segment carries the time it was spoken, and clicking it jumps the video to that second.
Up to 6 hours on Pro
Guests: 15 minutes. Free account: 1 hour. Pro: 6 hours — long enough for a full conference recording or a marathon podcast.
Summary, chapters and mind map included
Every transcript comes with an AI summary, timestamped chapters and a clickable mind map, so you can decide what to read before reading it.
Export where your notes live
Copy any section, download the whole thing as Markdown, or send it straight to Obsidian or Notion. Exports need a free account.