How do I get a transcript of a YouTube video with no captions?

Paul By Paul, who built Transcript Any Video
Published

If a YouTube video has no captions, YouTube has no transcript to show, and most transcript sites come back empty too, because they copy that same caption track. To get the text, you need something that listens to the audio itself: your computer's live captions, Whisper on your own machine, or a tool that transcribes the audio for you.

Which one fits depends on three things: whether the video is yours, whether you need text you can keep, and how much setup you'll accept. First, make sure the captions are really missing.

Does the video really have no captions?

YouTube's help is clear: you can see the full transcript of any video that has captions. So two checks, on a computer:

  1. Play the video and look for the CC button in the player bar. Click it. If text appears on the video, a caption track exists.
  2. Expand the description under the video and scroll to its end. If you see “Show transcript”, click it. You're done.

CC works but the transcript button is missing? That's a page or browser problem, not a missing transcript. This guide to a YouTube transcript not showing walks through the fixes. No CC button, or CC shows nothing? Read on.

Why do some videos have no captions?

YouTube lists the reasons automatic captions don't appear:

Only the first one fixes itself. YouTube says processing time depends on how complex the audio is, and gives no fixed delay. For every other reason on the list, waiting won't help.

Why do most transcript sites fail too?

Many transcript sites and extensions don't listen to the video. They fetch YouTube's caption track and format it. When there's no track, they show “No transcript available”, the same dead end. When I tested a video with no captions on October 7, 2026, youtube-transcript.io and NotebookLM both failed on it.

Some tools do say they work without captions. The top results for this search make that claim. Before you trust one, test it on your video. An empty result or “No transcript available” means it was reading captions after all.

Also check what “free” means. One of those top pages says no signup is needed, then shows a sign-in for 15 daily credits and never says what a credit buys.

Case 1: it's your own video

You have the most options, because YouTube lets you take your own file out.

  1. Give automatic captions time if the video was just uploaded. YouTube says they may not be ready at upload.
  2. If they never come, sign in to YouTube Studio, select Content, pick the video, open its menu and choose Download.
  3. You get an MP4 in 720p or 360p, depending on the video size. YouTube allows up to five downloads per video per day.
  4. Transcribe that file with Whisper, as shown below.

Case 2: you just need to follow along, free

Windows 11 and recent Macs can caption any audio your computer plays, a YouTube video in your browser included. Nothing to install.

The catch: this is for reading along, not for keeping the text. Microsoft says the captions “are not stored anywhere on the device or the cloud.” Apple's guide describes no way to save them. You read them live, at the speed of the video.

Case 3: you want a text file, free, and don't mind setup

Whisper is OpenAI's open-source speech recognition model. It listens to an audio file and writes what it hears, captions or not, on your own computer.

  1. Install Python, then Whisper: pip install -U openai-whisper
  2. Install ffmpeg, which Whisper needs: brew install ffmpeg on a Mac with Homebrew, choco install ffmpeg on Windows with Chocolatey.
  3. Get the audio file. Your own video comes from YouTube Studio. For someone else's, read the last FAQ question first.
  4. Run Whisper on the file:
whisper audio.mp3 --model turbo

Turbo is a faster version of Whisper's large-v3 model. On Reddit, someone who runs a transcript tool describes the same pipeline: yt-dlp to fetch the audio, then Whisper to transcribe it.

Check a Whisper transcript before you quote it

Whisper sometimes writes sentences nobody said. A 2024 study, “Careless Whisper”, found that roughly 1% of audio transcriptions contained entire hallucinated phrases or sentences. Silence is a common trigger. Watch for three signs:

Compare any doubtful passage with the video. This applies to every Whisper-based tool, mine included.

No captions, and no time to set up Python? That's the case I built Transcript Any Video for. You paste the YouTube link, and it transcribes the audio, not the captions. You get it word for word, with just your email, no password. Videos can run up to 2 hours. You buy credits once, 10 for $1.99, no subscription, and you get a refund if the transcript is wrong.

Transcribe a video

FAQ

Which languages does YouTube caption automatically?

67 languages, for long videos and Shorts alike, from Afrikaans to Zulu. One catch: when a video has several audio tracks, automatic captions only cover the default language. A dubbed track can have no transcript at all.

Is Whisper really free?

Yes. OpenAI released Whisper's code and model weights under the MIT License, so there's no fee and no account. What it costs you is setup time, and your own computer's time while it runs.

Am I allowed to download a YouTube video's audio to transcribe it?

YouTube's terms forbid copying or saving content unless the service expressly allows it, or you have prior written permission from YouTube and, where needed, the rights holders. For your own videos, the Download button in YouTube Studio is a download the service offers. For someone else's video, ask the creator.

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