How to Download YouTube Subtitles

A subtitle file is the text of a caption track plus its timings, saved as .srt, .vtt or .txt. You need one to get subtitles from YouTube into a video editor, a media player or a translation tool. If you only want the words to read or quote, the job is simpler: see how to get the transcript of a YouTube video.

Ways to download YouTube subtitles compared

Four methods cover how to download subtitles from YouTube, and the first question is whose video it is. YouTube Studio gives a file only for videos on a channel you manage. The other three methods work on any public video that has a caption track.

If the video is yours, use YouTube Studio: it is the official download, and the file goes back into Studio after you fix it. For someone else's public video, use a web tool for a single file or yt-dlp for many.

Web tools and the transcript panel run in a browser, so they work the same on Windows, macOS and a phone. YouTube Studio documents its subtitle download on a computer; on a phone, a web tool is the simpler route. yt-dlp has builds for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Download subtitles from your own video in YouTube Studio

YouTube Studio is YouTube's own way to download a caption file, and it works only for videos on a channel you can open in Studio. These are the steps from YouTube's help center:

1. 01

   Sign in to YouTube Studio

   Open studio.youtube.com with the Google Account that owns or manages the channel.

2. 02

   Open Subtitles

   From the left menu, select Subtitles, then click the video.

3. 03

   Edit the language

   Under Subtitles, click Edit next to the language you want.

4. 04

   Download the file

   Click Options and select Download subtitles. The browser saves the subtitles as a file.

YouTube's help center does not list the formats this download offers. SkipTheWatch and SubtitleBee say you can download subtitles in YouTube Studio as SRT, VTT or SBV, while Sozai's August 2026 guide reports getting an .sbv file only. Check the file extension before importing it. Automatic subtitles sit in the same list.

YouTube Studio gives you nothing for someone else's video, because its Subtitles page lists only your channel's uploads. Adding, editing and uploading captions on the creator side is covered in how to add subtitles to your own video.

Download subtitles from any public video

YouTube offers no subtitle file for videos you don't own, so every method below reads the caption track YouTube already sends to the player. If it doesn't exist, no tool can produce one from the video page.

Paste the link into a web tool

For one video at a time, a web tool is the quickest route: copy the link, paste it, choose the track and save the file. In TranscriptYou's YouTube subtitle downloader, the language menu lists the tracks the video carries, with automatic ones marked "auto". Check that the menu shows the track you want before you download: on a video with many creator tracks, another language can open first. Download then saves a .srt or .txt file. It is free, needs no account or browser extension, and takes Shorts links too.

DownSub is another well-known option; its homepage says it handles YouTube as well as Viki, Viu, WeTV and Kocowa. No site should ask you to install software or sign in with Google to read a public video's subtitles. Other subtitle and transcript tools, with their free limits and file formats, are compared in our roundup of transcript generators.

Use yt-dlp on the command line

yt-dlp is a free command-line downloader that can save subtitles without the video, which makes it the tool for playlists, channels and batches. Its README lists the options: --list-subs shows the tracks, --write-subs saves creator subtitles, --write-auto-subs saves automatic ones, --sub-langs picks languages (en, "en.*,ja" or all), --sub-format sets the preferred format and --skip-download skips the video itself.

This command saves the English track of one video as an SRT file; replace VIDEO_URL with the video link:

yt-dlp --write-subs --write-auto-subs --sub-langs en --sub-format "srt/best" --convert-subs srt --skip-download "VIDEO_URL"

--convert-subs (ass, lrc, srt or vtt) is a post-processing step, and yt-dlp's README names FFmpeg as the dependency for post-processing, so install FFmpeg as well. The README also asks for a JavaScript runtime such as Deno: without one, our run warned "No supported JavaScript runtime could be found", so we added --js-runtimes node.

An overlap means a cue is still running when the next starts, so two lines can show at once; the creator track had none. To remove overlaps, end each cue where the next begins, as in our captions guide. For automatic captions keep "srt/best": the VTT route tripled the words with repeated lines.

Copy the text from the transcript panel

When you need the text and not a file, the transcript panel is enough. On any video with captions, open the description and click Show transcript: the lines scroll with playback, and clicking one jumps to that moment. To keep the text, select the lines and copy them; no tool needed.

YouTube's help page for the panel describes reading along and jumping to a line; it documents no Download item, so don't count on one. Device-by-device steps are in how to get the transcript of a YouTube video, and a separate guide shows how to copy a YouTube transcript without timestamps. TranscriptYou's transcript page shows the same text with a one-click Copy.

SRT, TXT or VTT: which file to choose

Choose the format by where the file goes next: a player or a video editor needs timings, a document or an AI chat needs plain text.

TranscriptYou saves only .srt and .txt, and its Timestamps switch decides whether the .txt file keeps a time code on each line. VTT comes from yt-dlp (--convert-subs vtt) and, per SkipTheWatch and SubtitleBee, from YouTube Studio. What sits inside an SRT file and how players read it is explained on the YouTube to SRT page.

Pick the right track and language

One video can carry several subtitle tracks, and the one you choose decides the file's quality.

Auto-generated or creator subtitles

YouTube auto subtitles come from speech recognition, and YouTube's help center says their quality may vary: mispronunciations, accents, dialects and background noise all cause errors. Automatic subtitles are available in 67 languages. On a video with several audio tracks they follow the default language, and on a new upload they may appear some time later.

If a language has both a creator track and an automatic one, take the creator's: a person wrote or checked it. TranscriptYou marks automatic tracks "auto" in its language menu. One more detail from YouTube's help: by default, automatic captions replace potentially inappropriate words with [ __ ], so expect that gap in an automatic file.

Subtitles in another language

You can only download languages the video already has: tracks the creator uploaded or tracks YouTube provides. TranscriptYou lists the tracks it receives for the video and does not translate them; translation is not available in the tool yet.

In yt-dlp, --list-subs shows every available language and --sub-langs selects one. The list can include machine-translated automatic tracks such as "Albanian from English" (see the test above). Treat those like any automatic captions and check names and terms against the original.

When there is nothing to download

Every method in this guide reads an existing caption track, so these cases end without a file:

• No subtitle track. TranscriptYou and similar tools don't run their own speech recognition. YouTube's help lists why automatic captions can be missing: unsupported language, a very long video, poor sound, long silence at the start, overlapping speech, or processing that is still running. More in YouTube transcript not showing.
• Private, members-only or age-restricted videos. TranscriptYou reads public videos only, so these return nothing.
• Live streams. Live automatic captions are English-only and are not kept on the video. After the stream ends, YouTube generates new automatic captions for the recording, and they may differ, so download from the recording.
• Text drawn into the picture. Burned-in subtitles are part of the image, not a track, so there is no file to save.
• Video and subtitles in one MP4. TranscriptYou does not download video or audio; it saves the subtitle file only.

The subtitle text belongs to the video's creator. Ask for permission before you republish it or use it commercially.

Edit and reuse the downloaded file

A downloaded .srt or .txt file is plain text, so Notepad or TextEdit opens it. YouTube's help center suggests the same for caption timing: download the file, fix it in a plain text editor and upload it again. Keep the time code lines as they are and save the file as UTF-8 so accented letters survive.

For your own video the loop is short: download the track from YouTube Studio, correct names and terms, then upload the corrected file back to YouTube. To watch a downloaded video with its subtitles, open it in VLC media player and add the .srt through Subtitle → Add Subtitle File. Video editors and other platforms accept SRT too; see where to use an SRT file.