Youtube Transcript Scraper

Extract full transcripts (captions/subtitles) from any public YouTube video by simply providing its URL. This Apify actor fetches the English transcript (if available) and returns both the full text and detailed timing information for each snippet.

Features

• Extracts YouTube video transcripts (captions/subtitles) in English
• Returns both full transcript text and snippet timing (start, duration, text)
• Easy input: just provide a YouTube video URL
• Results stored in Apify Dataset for easy download and integration

How It Works

1. Provide a YouTube video URL as input.
2. The actor fetches and extracts the English transcript, if available.
3. The transcript is returned as both a full text and as an array of timed snippets.
4. Results are saved to the Apify dataset for your use.

Input

• url (string, required): The URL of the YouTube video you want to extract the transcript from.

Example:

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
}

Output

Each dataset item contains:

• lang: Language of the transcript (e.g., "English")
• text: The full transcript as a single string
• snippets: An array of objects with text, start, and duration for each caption line

Example:

{
  "lang": "English",
  "text": "Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down ...",
  "snippets": [
    { "text": "Never gonna give you up", "start": 0.0, "duration": 3.5 },
    { "text": "Never gonna let you down", "start": 3.5, "duration": 4.2 }
    // ... more snippets
  ]
}

Use Cases

• Quickly extract subtitles for accessibility or translation projects
• Generate searchable text from YouTube videos for research or content analysis
• Archive or repurpose video content in text form
• Build tools for language learning or subtitle synchronization

Built with ❤️ using Apify.