Transcripts

Transcripts come from caption tracks published for a video. They are useful for search, analysis, summaries, and accessibility workflows.

Read the complete text

const transcript = await yt.transcript('dQw4w9WgXcQ');

transcript.title; // 'Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)'
transcript.data; // "[♪♪♪] ♪ We're no strangers to love ♪ ♪ You know the rules and so do I ♪…"

By default, data is one whitespace-normalized paragraph. The SDK removes caption line breaks and YouTube’s >> speaker markers. It prefers a human-written track, then falls back to an auto-generated track.

Ask for a language

Use a language code or the displayed track name. Either one has to match a published track exactly, so a regional track is es-419, not es:

const spanish = await yt.transcript('dQw4w9WgXcQ', {
  language: 'es-419',
});

spanish.title; // 'Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)'
spanish.data; // 'Conocemos bien el amor Tú conoces las reglas, igual que yo…'

If no matching track exists, the Promise rejects with NotFoundError. The message lists the available tracks, which is useful for logging or a language picker.

Keep timestamps

Set segmented: true when your application needs to connect text to playback:

const transcript = await yt.transcript('dQw4w9WgXcQ', {
  segmented: true,
});

transcript.data[0]; // { start: 1.36, end: 3.04, text: '[♪♪♪]' }
transcript.data[1]; // { start: 18.64, end: 21.88, text: "♪ We're no strangers to love ♪" }

for (const segment of transcript.data) {
  console.log(segment.start, segment.end, segment.text);
}

start and end are numbers. Each segment’s text is normalized to one line. Segmented output is useful for subtitles, chapters, or links to a moment; complete text is simpler for full-document analysis.

Read several transcripts

const results = await yt.transcripts(videoIds, {
  language: 'en',
  segmented: true,
  concurrency: 2,
});

results[0].ok; // true
results[0].value.data[0].text; // first caption line when captions exist

Each missing caption track becomes a failed item without discarding successful transcripts. A video being playable does not guarantee that it has captions.