Three formats, one click each
Paste any YouTube URL into the input above and switch to the Subtitles tab. Every available caption track appears as its own row — manual captions labeled separately from auto-generated ones, every language listed independently. Each row has three buttons:
- SRT — the standard format for desktop video players (VLC, MPC-HC, Plex). Drop a
video.mp4andvideo.srtin the same folder and the player auto-loads them. - VTT — the WebVTT format used by HTML5
<track>elements. Right format for embedding captions on a web page. - TXT — plain transcript with no timestamps, deduplicated for clean reading. Right format for quoting, searching, study guides, or feeding into AI tools.
Manual vs auto-generated
YouTube subtitles come from two sources:
- Manual — uploaded by the channel owner or their captioning team. High accuracy, properly punctuated, often available in several languages on big-creator channels.
- Auto-generated (ASR) — YouTube’s speech recognition. Available on most videos in the channel’s spoken language. Accuracy ranges from ~95% on clear speech to ~75% on heavy accents or background music.
Both are downloadable; we label which is which so you don’t accidentally grab the auto version when a manual one exists. For accuracy-sensitive work (academic citation, legal transcripts, professional translation reference), prefer manual.
Multi-language uploads
Big creator channels — MrBeast, Veritasium, Kurzgesagt, NASA, TED — increasingly publish videos with caption tracks in 10+ languages. We list every track. A video with 15 caption languages shows 15 rows, each independently downloadable in SRT/VTT/TXT.
For translators using multi-language audio + subtitles as reference material, see our workflow guide for translators.
Common use cases
- Loading subtitles in VLC — download SRT, drop next to MP4, VLC auto-loads
- Reading a podcast/lecture as text — download TXT, read in 10 minutes what would have taken an hour to listen to
- Quoting in research papers — TXT for the text, SRT if you need timestamps for citation
- Embedding on a web page — VTT for HTML5
<track>elements - Language learning — TXT for vocabulary practice, SRT for paired audio-text study
- Accessibility — provide captions to students with hearing differences in offline classroom settings
Beyond YouTube's built-in download
YouTube’s own “copy transcript” feature exists, but it gives you raw text in the player’s sidebar — no proper file format, no batch download, no language switcher in one place. VidPickr surfaces every track and every format with a single paste.
For more on the file format choices and which tool is best for what, see our comparison of the 7 best free subtitle downloaders and our full SRT/VTT/TXT guide.