How to get transcripts of the YouTube Video
Youtube, now the internet's largest video platform with resourceful information, has constantly improved its features and added newer ones to make the platform more user-friendly. One of these features is the YouTube Transcript.
This article will teach you how to get the uploaded YouTube video transcript on desktop and mobile devices. And if the YouTube video doesn’t have a transcript, we’ll introduce you to a smart AI tool that can generate an accurate transcript for your YouTube videos.
What is a YouTube Transcript
YouTube Transcript is a simple way of creating captions for YouTube videos. It contains the words said in the video at a particular time. Transcript works best for videos with good sound quality. Therefore, If you’re a busy person who doesn’t have time to watch long YouTube videos or someone with impaired hearing, the YouTube Transcript feature will help you. With the YouTube transcript, you can read what the person is saying even without listening to the video.
In addition, do not be confused by the transcript feature with the Closed Caption. The Closed Capture feature is similar to subtitles to show what the speaker is saying in the video. In contrast, YouTube Transcript is shown beside the video, where you can copy the text and paste it on any note-taking tool (Notion, Google Docs, Microsoft Word) to revisit.
Keep reading this guide to find out how to get the transcript of a YouTube video on various devices.
How to Get a Transcript of a YouTube Video
Getting a transcript of a YouTube video on your computer (PC or laptop) and mobile devices (Android and iOS) is relatively simple, provided you can access YouTube. However, not all YouTube videos have a transcript. Only YouTube Videos with the Closed Caption allow you to see the transcript. But since most YouTube videos can auto-generate concise closed captions, you can automatically generate transcripts also from the captions. It’s important to know that the audio quality, including its clarity, accent, and dialect, determines the accuracy level of the text in the transcript.
In this section, we’ll introduce you to Glasp, an AI tool that provides you with a YouTube transcript with a lesser timestamp than the built-in system. In addition, you will learn how to find the transcript if the video has a closed caption using the YouTube built-in system on both computer and mobile devices.
How to use Glasp to get a Transcript of a YouTube Video on a Desktop
Glasp is a free browser extension-based social web highlighter that you can use to capture content online and highlight and organize quotes and ideas from the web instead of switching back and forth on your screen. It also allows you to share your highlights and copied notes with people of like minds through Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Email, and you can also download them.
In addition to its functions, the Glasp Browser extension provides transcripts of YouTube videos with one click with fewer timestamps. In contrast to the YouTube default system that provides the transcript in short sentences and few words per timestamp, the Glasp extension provides a concise and correct text format of the video content with lesser timestamps by combining exact words spoken in at least 30 seconds of the video. This way, it’s easy to organize, modify, edit, and summarize the transcripts without having to deal with deleting many timestamps and joining several sentences together, as in the YouTube built-in transcript system.
The Glasp tool is suitable for note-takers, highlighters, students, and anyone involved in digital learning. The extension is available on Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Brave.
So how do you use this competent AI tool to obtain your YouTube video transcript with lesser timestamps? Follow the step-by-step guide below:
Step 1: Sign up for Glasp
Launch your browser (Chrome, Safari, Brave, or Microsoft Edge) and input the ‘Glasp’ into the search bar. Or visit the Glasp Official website. Upon reaching it click Sign up (beta) and continue using your Google Account.
After finalizing your account, you will be redirected to the Chrome Web Store.
Step 2: Install the Glasp extension to your browser
Click Add to Chrome(Brave or Edge) and install Glasp on your chosen browser.
Step 3: Go to the Home page on Glasp
Once you’ve installed your Glasp extension, go to its home page. Here, you will see the sidebar opened where you can test highlighting words or sentences. So, please click the Home icon on the sidebar.
Also, you are free to choose your favorite topics. Choosing your topics could be a leap step as this will help you identify the articles in line with your interests.
If you’re new to Glasp and don’t have enough highlights, please skip to Step 6.
Step 4: Open a YouTube video
Please open any YouTube video. If you could have successfully installed the Chrome extension in step 2, you can see a Glasp toolbar at the top right.
Click the down-row icon on the toolbar. It opens a window including the transcripts of the YouTube video.
Step 5: Copy the transcripts
Please click on the icon at the right on the toolbar. It copies all the transcripts in the YouTube video.
Notice: If YouTube doesn't provide the transcripts, the Glasp extension can't show the transcripts.
Step 6: Paste the transcripts
After you copy the transcripts of the YouTube video, paste them anywhere you want. Here, I showcase how to paste on Notion.
As you can see, it copies the title and link to the YouTube video.
(Optional) Step 7: Change the pasting setting
If you'd like to paste it in markdown style, please change the settings from the toolbar. To do that, click the setting button on the toolbar.
It opens the setting page, so please select Markdown in the section below.
You can close this page after selecting the Markdown. The setting is automatically saved.
After updating the setting, please try to copy-n-paste the YouTube transcripts again. Here, I paste it in the markdown style.
With this feature, you can grasp the content of the video easily, take notes, save your learnings, and create a new video.
I hope this article helps you understand how to get the YouTube video's transcripts. If you’re interested in Glasp, you can look into it here 👀
And if you want to know how to summarize the YouTube video, please look at this tutorial.
If you have any questions, please let us know through Twitter, Linkedin, email (hi@glasp.co), or Slack.
See you next time,
Glasp team
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