A small local app that copies YouTube captions (the same text as Show transcript on a video) onto your computer.
You do not need a YouTube API key. You do not need to know how to code.
- Download or clone this folder onto your computer.
- Open the folder in Finder.
- Double-click
Open UI. - A Terminal window will open. Leave it open.
- Your browser should open to http://localhost:3000.
That app is signed and notarized with Apple. The first time, macOS may still ask if you want to open it — choose Open.
If you prefer Terminal:
cd ~/YouTube-Transcript-Scraper
./start.shTo stop: click the Terminal window and press Control + C.
- Single Video — paste a YouTube video link, then click Get Transcript.
- Channel Scraper — paste a channel link (like
https://www.youtube.com/@ChannelName) to pull captions from many videos.
What you get is the video’s caption track (manual or auto-generated). If a video has no captions, it is skipped.
For bigger channel jobs, saved files live in a data folder inside this project. Each video can have:
- the transcript (the captions, with times)
- extra info like title, date, and description
You can open those files later, or drop them into a tool like NotebookLM.
If you prefer typing commands, from this folder:
./start.shThat does the same thing as double-clicking Open UI.command.
To pull a whole channel from the terminal (resumes if you stop and run it again):
source .venv/bin/activate
python scrape_channel.py "https://www.youtube.com/@ChannelName"Optional filters (smaller batches without a Google API key):
python scrape_channel.py "https://www.youtube.com/@ChannelName" -n 50 --min-duration 61 --date-after 2024-01-01 --date-before 2024-12-31- You need Python 3.10 or newer on your Mac. The one-click file will try to set the rest up for you.
- This runs only on your computer (
localhost). It is not a website on the internet. - YouTube may slow you down if you pull too many videos too fast. That is normal. You can stop and start again later.