youtube-transcript

Extract transcripts from YouTube videos with optional timestamps. Extract transcripts from YouTube videos using the youtube-transcript-api. Run the script with a YouTube URL or video ID: With timestamps: - Accepts multiple URL formats (youtube.com/watch?v=, youtu.be/, embed links, or raw video IDs) and outputs plain text or timestamped format - Fetches auto-generated or manually added captions, whichever is available; requires captions to be enabled on the video - Outputs to a file named VIDEO_ID-transcript.txt by default, or to a user-specified file path - When timestamps are omitted, reorganizes caption segments into complete paragraphs to avoid mid-sentence line breaks - Without timestamps (default): Plain text, one line per caption segment - With timestamps : [MM:SS] text format (or [HH:MM:SS] for longer videos) - - - - Raw video ID (11 characters) - CRITICAL: YOU MUST NEVER MODIFY THE RETURNED TRANSCRIPT - If the transcript is without timestamps, you SHOULD clean it up so that it is arranged by complete paragraphs and the lines don't cut in the middle of sentences. - If you were asked to save the transcript to a specific file, save it to the requested file. - If no output file was specified, use the YouTube video ID with a -transcript.txt suffix. - Fetches auto-generated or manually added captions (whichever is available) - Requires the video to have captions enabled -...