Overcast Transcript Exporter

Exports transcript text files from Overcast on macOS.

Workaround implemented

Overcast TestFlight transcript content is available on-device in SQLite blobs:

• OCEpisode.generatedTranscriptData
• OCEpisode.externalTranscriptData

These blobs are raw DEFLATE payloads. This exporter now decodes them directly, so you can extract transcript text even when transcriptURL is empty.

Default behavior

By default, the script does this:

• subscribed podcasts only
• episodes still in feed only
• on-device downloaded episodes only (downloadState = 1)
• last 14 days
• no hard max (MAX=0 means unlimited)
• skip existing files
• decode on-device blobs first
• fallback to transcriptURL only if blob decode is unavailable

Run

cd /Users/ryanmcdonough/Desktop/overcast-transcript-exporter
./overcast_export_transcripts.sh

Useful options

• --days N
• --max N (0 = no limit)
• --on-device-only 0|1
• --include-deleted 0|1
• --skip-existing 0|1
• --dry-run 0|1
• --use-device-blobs 0|1
• --allow-url-fallback 0|1
• --db PATH
• --out PATH

Notes

• Filename format: Podcast - Episode - YYYY-MM-DD [episodeID].txt
• If no blob and no usable URL, episode is reported as unavailable.