🌟 YouTube Transcript Fetcher Actor

Instantly extract accurate YouTube transcripts — fast, secure, and production-ready.

---

📖 Summary

This actor automatically fetches YouTube video transcripts (including Shorts), returning clean, timestamped text data. It uses a dual-source strategy to ensure transcripts are delivered even when standard captions are unavailable.

Key benefits:

• ⚡ Get transcripts instantly from multiple YouTube URLs.
• 🔁 Smart fallback ensures reliable results.
• 🧠 Normalizes Shorts and youtu.be links automatically.
• 🔒 Privacy-safe, proxy-compatible, and production-ready.

---

💡 Use Cases

• 📰 Generate blog summaries or subtitles from videos.
• 🎓 Extract transcripts for research or educational analysis.
• 📊 Analyze large-scale YouTube datasets for content insights.
• 🧾 Auto-generate closed captions for your platform.
• 🧠 Power AI models or LLM pipelines with real spoken text.

---

⚡ Quick Start (Console — One Click)

1. Open the Actor on Apify Console.
2. Paste YouTube video URLs into the Input field.
3. Click Run — results appear instantly in your Dataset.

---

⚙️ Quick Start (CLI + API)

CLI:

$apify call neuro-scraper/youtube-transcript-fetcher --input ./input.example.json

Python (apify-client):

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('<APIFY_TOKEN>')
run = client.actor('neuro-scraper/youtube-transcript-fetcher').call(
    run_input={"startUrls": [{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"}]}
)
for item in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items()['items']:
    print(item['Transcript']['plain_text'])

---

📝 Inputs

🔑 Name	📝 Type	❓ Required	⚙️ Default	📌 Example	🧠 Notes
startUrls	array	✅ Yes	[]	[{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abcd1234"}]	List of YouTube video URLs
workers	integer	⚙️ Optional	5	10	Max concurrent fetches
proxyConfiguration	object	⚙️ Optional	{}	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Proxy settings if needed

Example input (Console JSON):

{
  "startUrls": [
    {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"},
    {"url": "https://youtu.be/example123"}
  ],
  "workers": 5,
  "proxyConfiguration": {"useApifyProxy": true}
}

---

📄 Outputs

Each item in the Dataset contains:

{
    "video_id": "AWBsoArakNY",
    "title": "Who Has The Fastest Reaction Time?",
    "url": "https://youtube.com/AWBsoArakNY?si=8ThAJzdEEA1PnZRk",
    "lang": "en",
    "format": "vtt",
    "segments": [
      {
        "start": 3.919,
        "end": 5.99,
        "text": "I [screaming] WON. I WON. OH, I SHOULD",
        "duration": 2.071,
        "duration_seconds": 2,
        "duration_milliseconds": 71,
        "duration_seconds_with_ms": "2.071",
        "duration_minutes": 0.03451666666666667,
        "start_ts": "00:00:03.919",
        "end_ts": "00:00:05.990",
        "display": "Transcripts:\nStart: 00:00:03.919  End: 00:00:05.990\nDuration: 2.071 seconds (0.034517 minutes)\n\nNo transcript added for this duration."
      }
      ]
      }

Results are stored in the default Dataset for easy export (JSON, CSV, Excel).

---

🔑 Environment Variables

Variable	Description
APIFY_TOKEN	Required for authentication
HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY	Optional custom proxies
APIFY_PROXY_PASSWORD	Use with Apify Proxy

Store all credentials securely as secrets, not plaintext.

---

▶️ How to Run

1. Open Apify Console.
2. Navigate to Actors → YouTube Transcript Fetcher.
3. Paste input JSON or fill the input form.
4. Click Run.
5. View results in the Dataset tab.

---

⏰ Scheduling & Webhooks

• Schedule periodic runs (e.g., daily or hourly) from the Schedule tab.
• Configure Webhooks to trigger a custom workflow or send notifications on completion.

---

🕾 Logs & Troubleshooting

• Monitor real-time logs in the Console Run Log panel.

• Common issues:

  • ❌ No transcript available: Video may lack captions.
  • ⚠️ Timeout errors: Increase workers or adjust proxy settings.

---

🔒 Permissions & Storage

• Uses Dataset for storing transcript results.
• Uses RequestQueue internally for managing URL processing.
• Fully privacy-safe: no personal data stored or shared.

---

🔟 Changelog

Version	Date	Notes
1.0.0	2025-11-04	Initial release — stable and production-ready

---

🖌 Notes / TODOs

• TODO: Confirm output schema for advanced use-cases.
• TODO: Add demo GIF of console run for better UX.

---

🌍 Proxy Configuration

Enable Apify Proxy directly in the Console for easy network routing.

Custom proxy example:

{
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "proxyUrls": ["http://<PROXY_USER:PASS@HOST:PORT>"]
  }
}

Or use environment variables:

export HTTP_PROXY=http://<PROXY_USER:PASS@HOST:PORT>
export HTTPS_PROXY=http://<PROXY_USER:PASS@HOST:PORT>

Best practice: Store proxy credentials as secrets.

TODO: Consider proxy rotation for large-scale scraping.

---

📚 References

• Apify Actor README Guidelines
• Input/Output Schema Docs
• Apify CLI + API Usage

---

🤔 Inferred from main.py

• Fetches data from external YouTube transcript APIs.
• Supports fallback transcript extraction.
• Uses proxy handling and retry logic for stability.
• Exports formatted text with timestamps.

---

✅ Why this Actor

YouTube Transcript Fetcher is built for professionals who need transcripts fast, reliably, and at scale — ideal for analysts, educators, and developers.

Run this Actor on Apify Console — get instant transcripts in seconds.