How to remove timestamps from a YouTube transcript

Paul By Paul, who built Transcript Any Video
Published

If the transcript panel still has three dots at the top, click them, choose Toggle timestamps, then copy the text. On many videos that menu has been gone since YouTube's 2026 redesign, so the dependable fix is to copy the transcript as it is and delete every timestamp at once with find and replace in Google Docs or Word.

The exact patterns to paste are below. They work on any transcript that writes times like 1:23, 1:02:03 or [1:23].

Can you still toggle timestamps off in YouTube?

On some videos, yes. The switch lives in the transcript panel, not in YouTube's settings:

  1. Open the video in a browser on a computer.
  2. Open the transcript. Expand the description and click Show transcript, at its end.
  3. Click the three dots at the top of the transcript panel.
  4. Choose Toggle timestamps. The times disappear from the panel.
  5. Copy. Click inside the panel, press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on a Mac), then Ctrl+C.

No three dots? You didn't miss a setting. In early March 2026, users on the Readlang forum reported a new panel with much larger text, where both the three dots and the language button are gone. One of them still got the old panel on older videos and on auto-generated transcripts, but not on newer videos with captions uploaded by the creator. A Reddit post from 2026 puts it plainly: “since the UI update you can no longer turn them off.” YouTube's own help page on transcripts doesn't mention the option at all. The other quirks of the new panel are in YouTube transcript not working.

How do you remove timestamps in Google Docs?

Google Docs' find and replace accepts regular expressions, a small pattern language for text. It's free and works on any computer.

  1. Paste the transcript into a new Google Doc.
  2. Click Edit, then Find and replace.
  3. In Find, paste this pattern: \[?\d{1,2}(:\d{2}){1,2}\]? ?
  4. Tick Match using regular expressions. Leave Replace with empty.
  5. Click Replace all.

The pattern catches 0:03, 12:45 and 1:02:03, with or without square brackets. The blank lines left behind don't get in the way of reading or of pasting the text into an AI chat.

One trap: it also deletes a clock time spoken in the video. “We meet at 10:30” becomes “We meet at”. If the video talks about times, click Replace instead of Replace all and check each match.

What if the timestamps paste as “3minutes29seconds”?

That's the new panel. A Readlang user noticed that its timestamps copy as words glued to numbers, like “3minutes29seconds”, instead of 3:29. Same steps, with this pattern:

(\d+(hours?|minutes?|seconds?),?)+

It only matches numbers stuck to the words, so a sentence like “wait 5 minutes” stays intact.

How do you remove timestamps from a transcript in Word?

Word has no regular expressions, but its wildcards do the same job. Microsoft documents them in its find and replace guide.

  1. Paste the transcript as plain text: right-click, then Keep Text Only.
  2. Press Ctrl+H to open Find and Replace, then click More.
  3. Tick Use wildcards.
  4. In Find what, paste: [0-9:]{4,8}^13
  5. Leave Replace with empty and click Replace All.

This removes every line that holds only a time, with its line break, so the text closes up. ^13 is Word's code for the end of a paragraph. The pattern would also remove a line holding nothing but a number like 2026, which is rare in a transcript.

If nothing is replaced, your lines may end with a manual line break instead. Eric Fletcher, answering on Experts Exchange, points out that those need ^11 in place of ^13.

If each line starts with a time in brackets, like [12:45] Hello, use \[[0-9:]{4,8}\] instead, with the space at the end. To merge everything into one block afterwards, untick Use wildcards, find ^p and replace it with a space.

Can you hide YouTube's timestamps for good?

A user on r/techsupportmacgyver found a workaround in 2026 with uBlock Origin, the ad blocker, on Firefox:

  1. Open a transcript and right-click any timestamp.
  2. Choose Block element. A box appears.
  3. Click Pick, then click a timestamp. It turns red.
  4. Click Create.

The poster says the timestamps then stay hidden on every video, and YouTube's sync button still works. It's an unofficial trick, so check one paste before you rely on it.

What other free tools remove timestamps?

What if there's no Show transcript button at all?

Then there's nothing to clean: the video has no captions, so YouTube has no transcript to show. The usual reasons are in YouTube transcript not showing. The free fix is to run Whisper, OpenAI's open-source speech recognition model, on the audio. The steps are in how to transcribe YouTube audio.

No transcript, and no time to set up Whisper? That's the case I built Transcript Any Video for. You paste the YouTube link, and it transcribes the video's audio, up to 2 hours, with the language detected on its own. Each line starts with its time in brackets, like [0:31], so you can find the moment in the video. The Google Docs pattern above strips them in one pass. Copy it all or download it as a .txt or .md file. A video without captions costs 1 credit per 30 minutes. Credits are bought once, 10 for $1.99, and never expire. No subscription, sign-in with just your email, and you can ask for a refund. If the video already has captions, YouTube's free transcript gives you the same text.

Transcribe a video

FAQ

Can you remove timestamps on the YouTube app?

Not in the app. A 2026 guide from Claras notes that the app shows transcripts with timestamps but can't turn them off or easily copy the full text. Open the video in your phone's browser, request the desktop site, and use the transcript panel there.

How do you remove timestamps from an SRT, VTT or SBV file?

Those subtitle files put a full timing line above each caption, not a single time. A 2016 TextMate mailing list thread shows YouTube's SBV layout: a line like 0:00:10.100,0:00:11.191, then the text, then a blank line. The patterns on this page leave the milliseconds behind. Use a cleaner that says it reads these files, like GetYouTubeText's, which lists SRT and VTT.

Are online timestamp removers safe for private transcripts?

GetYouTubeText says its remover runs in your browser, so nothing is uploaded or stored. TimeWipe says its free cleaning doesn't send pasted text to its servers. Those are their own claims. For a confidential transcript, the Word method keeps the text on your computer.

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