Paste YouTube links, tick the videos you want, press Start. Get clean transcripts in one Word file, plus video, audio and thumbnails. No install, no command prompt.
Start in a minute
- Get the zip. Open the latest release and click the
.zipfile under Assets (about 220 MB). - Unzip it anywhere. Your Desktop, Documents or a USB stick. Nothing is installed.
- Open it. Double-click
YouTube Scraper.exe. If Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", click More info, then Run anyway.
Your first transcript
- Paste one or more links into the box: single videos, a playlist, a channel, or a whole list of links. Links inside a sentence are found too, and you can open a
.txtfile of links. - Click Add to list. Playlists and channels open up into their videos; tick or untick each one.
- Choose what you want: a transcript language (or the video's own spoken language), the Word file, and any extras.
- Press Start. Each video shows its own status, and the finished files land in
Documents\YouTube Scraper, or in any folder you pick.
Lines that are not links are treated as a YouTube search, so typing sourdough starter adds the top 20 results to the list.
Transcripts you can actually read
- One Word fileAll transcripts in one
.docx: each video's title as a heading, a clickable contents list, and a line with the channel, date and link. - No doubled linesYouTube's auto-captions repeat every line as they roll. The app removes the repeats and joins the text into paragraphs.
- No sound tagsOptionally drop
[Music],[Applause],♪and>>markers. - Any languagePick a caption language, or take the language the video is spoken in. Human captions come first, then YouTube's automatic ones.
Every format you need
| Output | What you get |
|---|---|
| Word | One .docx with every transcript |
| Text | A .txt per video, or one combined text file |
| Subtitles | A clean .srt per video, ready for a video editor |
| Spreadsheet | A .csv list of the videos for Excel or Google Sheets |
| Video | MP4 at best quality, 1080p, 720p, 480p or 360p |
| Audio | MP3 with the video's thumbnail as cover art |
| Thumbnails | The video's picture as a JPG |
Every file for a video shares one name, its title. You can number them 001 - , 002 - in list order, or sort by title A to Z or Z to A. The Word file and the CSV follow the same order.
Already have subtitle files?
The Combine my files tab takes the .srt, .vtt or .txt files you already have, cleans them the same way, and joins them into one Word file. No internet needed.
Keeps working when YouTube changes
YouTube changes often, and tools that bundle an old engine stop working. YouTube Scraper is built on the open-source yt-dlp. When something stops working, click Update engine in the app and it fetches the newest yt-dlp in place. You don't need a new version of the app. It also waits and retries on its own when YouTube asks it to slow down, and a re-run skips captions it already has.
Private by design
Everything runs on your own computer. No account, no ads, no analytics, no tracking.
The app talks only to YouTube, for the videos you add, and to GitHub, when you click Update engine.
Settings stay in a small settings.json next to the app. The source code is open for anyone to read on GitHub.
Good to know
- Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. The unzipped folder is about 540 MB because it carries its own video tools (FFmpeg and Deno).
- Age-restricted or members-only videos, and "confirm you're not a bot" pages, need Settings › Use my browser login. Firefox works best; Chrome and Edge must be closed first.
- On a slow connection, keep Parallel downloads at 2.
- Please download only videos you have the right to keep, and follow YouTube's Terms of Service.
- Free and open source under the MIT License.
Want a feature in YouTube Scraper, or a Mac version? Add it to the wishlist and vote. The most-voted wishes get built first.