Guides· 21 min read
How to extract YouTube subtitles for free
Four free ways to get subtitles out of a YouTube video, which one fits your job, how accurate the text is, and what to do when there is no track.
The notebook
How the tools actually work.
Guides, format notes and the unglamorous parts of timed text. Written by the people who maintain the extractor.
Guides· 8 min read
How to search YouTube transcripts
Find a word inside one video's transcript on a computer or a phone, search a whole channel's videos, and what YouTube's own search box will not do.
Faisal Ashfaq2 October 2026
Guides· 16 min read
How to get a transcript from a YouTube video
Where Show transcript sits on a computer and in the app, how to copy or print the text, and what to do when a video has no transcript button at all.
Faisal Ashfaq2 August 2026
Formats· 15 min read
SRT vs VTT vs TXT: which subtitle format?
What each format carries, which players accept it, and the exact styling rules YouTube applies to each file you upload.
Priya Raman28 July 2026
Explainers· 13 min read
Why some YouTube videos have no captions
Google lists six reasons automatic captions never arrive. Here is each one, how to spot it before you paste, and what actually fixes it.
Priya Raman21 July 2026
Workflows· 15 min read
How to turn a YouTube video into a blog post
A working method for a 90-minute podcast: transcript first, then a spine, then a draft you would actually publish under your own name.
Faisal Ashfaq14 July 2026
Under the hood· 14 min read
How YouTube captions actually work
Where timed text lives, what a cue really contains, how the official Captions API differs from the public player track, and why cleanup is the whole job.
Faisal Ashfaq7 July 2026
Workflows· 13 min read
Get a transcript from a YouTube playlist
A student workflow for 40 hours of lectures in one week, built on playlist export, search and timestamps, including the parts that did not work.
Priya Raman30 June 2026
Guides· 12 min read
How to cite a YouTube video (APA, MLA, Chicago)
Templates, worked examples and in-text forms for APA 7, MLA 9 and Chicago, with timestamps for quotes, how to cite a Short or a channel, and the mistakes that go wrong most often.
Faisal Ashfaq3 October 2026
Guides· 8 min read
How long can YouTube Shorts be?
The limit is three minutes. Here are the dates, which videos count as a Short, how to choose a length, the size and music limits, and how to check a length.
Faisal Ashfaq3 October 2026
Showing 10 of 10 notesOr skip to the tools
FAQ
Questions, answered.
What is the notebook?
Guides and format notes from the people who maintain the extractor. Not a news feed.
Are the methods still current?
Dates are on each post. When YouTube changes a caption path, we update the guide.
Can I quote these articles?
Yes. Link back to the post. Do not copy a whole guide onto another site.
Enough notes. Paste a link.
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