How do I download subtitles from a YouTube video?
Paste the video's URL into the app and it pulls the subtitle track — whether YouTube generated it automatically or the creator uploaded their own. From there you can read along with timestamps, copy any single line together with the moment it was said, or export the whole thing as a formatted PDF through the normal share sheet. This is the free path: for any public video that already has captions it is unlimited and needs no account. You can also flip the same content between subtitle view, where lines stay timed and separate, and transcript view, where they run together as a document. If the video has no captions at all, the app can generate them with AI instead, which is a Premium feature. Private and unlisted videos are the exception on every tier, since YouTube's API does not expose them to third-party apps at all.
What's the difference between subtitles and a transcript?
They are the same words in two different shapes. Subtitles are timed fragments, each tied to a moment in the video and broken where a line fits on screen rather than where a sentence ends. A transcript is that same text run together as a continuous document, which is what you want for reading, searching, quoting or feeding into a summary. The distinction matters in practice: subtitles are better when you are watching along and need to catch a specific line, while a transcript is better when you are studying, taking notes, or looking for something you half-remember hearing. The app holds both views of the same content and switches between them without refetching anything, so you are never choosing one at the expense of the other. Our blog post Subtitles vs Transcript goes into the differences in more depth.
Can I download YouTube subtitles for videos without captions?
Yes. When YouTube has no caption track for a video, the app can produce one by running the audio through Google's Gemini model, and it starts that automatically once the caption lookup comes back empty. This is a Premium feature, because unlike reading an existing track it means processing the entire audio. It accepts videos up to 2 hours on the automatic path, or up to 1 hour when you request AI transcription directly. The generated subtitles behave exactly like native ones afterwards: timestamped lines you can read along with, copy, translate into 134+ languages, or export to PDF. Three things it cannot do regardless of subscription — private videos, unlisted videos, and streams that are still live rather than archived. The generated track is stored with the video, so reopening it later does not re-run the transcription or cost anything further.
Can I translate YouTube subtitles into another language?
Yes. Once the subtitles are loaded, translating them into any of the 134+ supported languages is a single action, and the translated lines keep the original timing so they still line up with what is happening on screen. Both versions are kept, so switching back and forth between the original and the translation is instant rather than a re-translation each time. That matters for language learners, who typically want to read the original first and check themselves against the translation rather than replacing one with the other. Translation is a Premium feature — it runs a language model over the whole transcript. Reading the original subtitles of a captioned video stays free and unlimited underneath it. You can change your mind about the target language later without losing the original or the earlier translation.
Is the YouTube subtitle downloader free?
Extracting subtitles from any public video that already has YouTube captions is free and unlimited, with no account and no card required — you can read them, copy individual lines with timestamps, and export the set to PDF without ever subscribing. Premium covers the parts that run an AI model: generating subtitles for a video that has none, translating them into another language, writing a summary of the transcript, and building flashcards or a quiz from it. If your use case is reading and keeping the subtitles of videos that already have them, nothing here expires or meters out. Premium is one subscription handled by Apple or Google, and it covers both iOS and Android when you use the same store account. There is no watermark, no export limit and no sign-up wall on that free path — it behaves the same on the first video and the hundredth.
