skip to content
reelikklemind

📼 How to Download YouTube Subtitles

Last Updated:
Information 🌲 Evergreen Video Guide Tools

📼 How to Download YouTube Subtitles

Saving YouTube subtitles is very useful. In this guide, I’ll show you two simple ways I regularly use to download YouTube subtitles.

One method uses a powerful command-line tool (yt-dlp), and the other is a free web-based solution. There is also an optional transcription method.

✅ Method 1: Using yt-dlp (Command Line)

This is my preferred method when I want more control or need to download multiple subtitles efficiently. yt-dlp is an advanced fork of youtube-dl, optimized for modern YouTube changes and subtitle handling.

🔧 Requirements:

  • Python (installed)
  • yt-dlp installed:

    Install via pip if you haven’t already:

    pip install -U yt-dlp

🧪 Command to Use:

yt-dlp --write-auto-subs --skip-download "PASTE-YOUTUBE-LINK-HERE"

💡 What this does:

  • -write-auto-subs: Fetches the automatically generated subtitles (if available).
  • -skip-download: Doesn’t download the video itself — just the subs.

By default, this will download an .vtt subtitle file to your current folder. You can open it in any text editor, or convert it using tools like Subtitle Edit or ffmpeg.

🧼 Optional Clean-Up:

If you prefer clean, plain-text transcripts without timestamps, you can convert .vtt to .txt using:

ffmpeg -i subtitles.vtt subtitles.txt

✅ Method 2: Using DownSub.com

If you want a quick and easy solution with no technical setup, DownSub is a solid choice.

📋 How to use:

  1. Go to https://downsub.com
  2. Paste the full YouTube video URL into the input box
  3. Click “Download”
  4. Choose your preferred subtitle language and format (usually .srt or .txt)

🚦Limitations:

  • Only works for public videos
  • Won’t handle bulk downloads
  • Subtitles must be available and not disabled by the uploader

🛠️ When to Use Each Method

Use Case Best Method
One-click, no install DownSub
Batch download, automation yt-dlp
Need auto-generated subtitles yt-dlp
Clean .txt output needed yt-dlp + ffmpeg

🧠 Optional: Transcribe YouTube Videos Locally with AI

If you’d rather generate your own transcription, complete with optional summaries, translations, check out the excellent open-source project by @pmarreck on GitHub:

🔗 yt-transcriber

“TUI app – Give it a YouTube URL (or a path to a video or audio file) and you get a transcription with possible speaker identification (WIP) and optional summary or translation, all thanks to open-source AI tooling and my lack of enough free time to watch content-sparse YouTube videos.”

⚙️ Features:

  • Text User Interface (TUI) — easy to use from the terminal
  • Accepts YouTube URLs, video files, or audio files
  • Transcription powered by modern open-source AI models (like Whisper)
  • Optional features:
    • Summarization for faster understanding
    • Translation if the content is in another language

🧩 Perfect for:

  • Dense or information-rich videos you’d rather read than watch
  • Podcasts and interviews where speaker distinction matters
  • Videos that do not have subtitles
  • Creating reference material, searchable text, or study notes

It’s a more hands-on approach than yt-dlp or DownSub, but the flexibility and offline control are worth it, especially if you care about privacy, customization, or working with non-YouTube sources.

✍️ Final Notes

I usually rely on YouTube’s auto-generated subs rather than transcribing audio. While not perfect, they’re surprisingly good for most videos. For some videos however, transcribing is the only solution.

These tools save me time and help structure research or writing based on video content.



Crepi il lupo! 🐺