01 / Input
Paste a YouTube link, get the transcript.
AutoShorts pulls the video's caption track and lays it out as text you can actually read — optional timestamps, instant search, and one-click copy or download as TXT, PDF or JSON.
3 free credits on signup · 1 credit per video · Re-open the same video free, forever
- [0:00]
- So the question I get asked most often is where to actually start.
- [0:04]
- And my answer has not changed in about ten years.
- [0:09]
- You start with the thing you can finish this week.
- [0:13]
- Not the thing that sounds impressive on a slide.
- [0:18]
- Because momentum is the only resource you can manufacture.
02 / Transcript
Text you can read, search and keep
The transcript opens as a clean document — not a wall of caption fragments. Everything below is in the app the moment a video finishes.
Timestamps, if you want them
A toggle on the input. Leave it off for clean prose; switch it on and every caption line is prefixed with its time, so you can jump back to the moment in the video.
Search inside the transcript
Type in the search box and matches highlight as you go, with a counter and Enter to step through them. Useful when the video is an hour long and you need one sentence.
Copy the whole thing
One button puts the full text on your clipboard, exactly as displayed — with the timestamps if you turned them on.
03 / Process
Three steps, no upload
01
Paste the link
Any public YouTube URL — watch links, youtu.be short links, Shorts and live replays all work. Nothing to download or upload.
02
We pull the caption track
AutoShorts asks YouTube for the video's captions and picks the best track available, preferring a human-written one over the auto-generated version when both exist.
03
Read, copy or download
The transcript opens in your dashboard. Read it there, copy it out, or download it as TXT, PDF or JSON.
04 / Formats
Take it somewhere else
Three downloads, each for a different job. Nothing is locked behind a higher plan.
TXT
Plain text with a short header — title, channel, video ID, word count. The one to paste into a document or a prompt.
PDF
A formatted document for sharing or archiving. Latin and Cyrillic scripts render cleanly; Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Hebrew can break the layout, and the app warns you before it exports.
JSON
The structured version: every caption cue with its start time and duration, plus the video metadata. For when you are feeding it to something else.
05 / Languages
Whatever the video has captions in
Language coverage is YouTube's, not ours — and it is broad. We show you which tracks a video has and let you move between them.
Picked automatically
You do not choose a language on the way in. We read what the video offers and pick the best track, preferring manually written captions over auto-generated ones.
Switching is free and instant
When a video has more than one caption track we fetch them all at once and cache them, so changing language afterwards costs no credit and takes no round trip.
Machine captions are still machine captions
Auto-generated tracks carry YouTube's own mistakes — names, jargon and crosstalk are where they slip. We hand you the text as it is rather than guessing at corrections.
06 / Credits
What it costs, plainly
1 credit per video
Length does not change the price — a three-minute clip and a three-hour podcast both cost one credit.
3 free credits when you sign up
The same credits work across transcripts, clips and captions, so spend them on whichever you need. No card required to start.
The same video is free after the first time
Open a video you have already pulled and you are not charged again — including when you come back months later, or add timestamps you skipped the first time.
A failure never costs a credit
If the video has no captions, or the fetch fails, nothing is deducted. There is no refund step because there is no charge.
Works with videos that have captions — that is most of YouTube, but not all of it. If a creator disabled captions, there is nothing to pull. Credits
07 / FAQ
Questions, answered straight
Including the two that decide whether this works for your video at all.
What if the video has no captions?
Then there is no transcript to get, and we tell you so without charging a credit. AutoShorts reads the caption track YouTube already holds — it does not listen to the audio and write its own. Most uploads have captions, because YouTube generates them automatically for spoken content in supported languages, but a creator can switch them off and some music or non-speech videos never get them.
How accurate is the transcript?
As accurate as the captions on the video. A creator who uploaded their own captions gives you near-perfect text; an auto-generated track is usually good but stumbles on proper nouns, technical terms and people talking over each other. We show you the text unchanged rather than quietly rewriting it.
Do I get timestamps?
If you ask for them. There is a toggle beside the input, off by default. With it on, each caption line is prefixed with its start time — [1:24] for a short video, [1:02:30] once you pass an hour. They are per caption line, which is roughly a sentence, not per word.
Is there a limit on video length?
No length limit, and long videos cost the same single credit as short ones. Very long videos take longer to come back, since we fetch every caption track the video has.
What can I download?
TXT, PDF and JSON. TXT is plain text with a short header, JSON gives you every caption cue with its start time and duration, and PDF is the shareable one — though the app warns you first if the language uses a script it cannot lay out well.
Can I get a transcript of a private or unlisted video?
Unlisted videos work if you have the link, because YouTube still serves their captions. Private videos and members-only content do not — we can only reach what YouTube would show an anonymous viewer.
Get the transcript of your next video.
Paste a link and read the whole thing in about the time it takes to open the video. Your first credits are on us.
Get a transcript free3 free credits · No credit card · Nothing charged if the video has no captions
08 / Blog
From the blog
Deeper reading on this topic
