Most YouTube transcript tools give you plain text with no timestamps. If you need timestamps (for research, citations, video editing, or to know exactly when something was said), here’s the exact steps.
Quick answer
Use our YouTube Transcript tool — it has a “with timestamps” toggle. Works on any video that has captions, no extension needed:
- Copy the YouTube video URL
- Open pullsy.online/tools/youtube-transcript/
- Paste the URL
- Toggle With timestamps
- Copy or download the result
What “transcript with timestamps” looks like
Plain text version:
The first thing I want to talk about is how to make money online. Most people get this wrong. They think you need a product. You don’t.
With timestamps:
[00:00] The first thing I want to talk about is how to make money online. [00:04] Most people get this wrong. [00:07] They think you need a product. You don’t.
The timestamps let you jump directly to any moment in the video by clicking the timestamp — YouTube’s transcript panel does this automatically.
When you need timestamps
- Research / citations: pointing to a specific moment in a video in your essay
- Video editing: finding the exact clip to cut for a reel
- Notes: timestamped notes are much more useful for revisiting videos later
- Quote-grabbing: “she said this at 4:32 in this video”
- Subtitles: you can paste timestamped text into a subtitle editor
Step-by-step guide
Step 1: Find a video that has captions
Not every YouTube video has a transcript. Three cases:
- Auto-generated captions — YouTube’s AI generates these for most English videos. They’re usually accurate enough.
- Creator-uploaded captions — the creator uploaded their own transcript. These are most accurate.
- No captions — older videos, non-English videos, or creators who disabled them. Our tool returns an error for these.
Step 2: Copy the video URL
Open the video in YouTube, copy the URL from the address bar. It should look like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQBoth the full URL and the short version (https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ) work.
Step 3: Use Pullsy’s tool
- Open pullsy.online/tools/youtube-transcript/
- Paste the URL into the input field
- Toggle With timestamps (the default is plain text)
- Click Get transcript
Step 4: Copy or download
The tool gives you a text box with the timestamped transcript. You can:
- Click Copy to copy to clipboard
- Click Download .txt to save the file
- Click Download .srt if you need a subtitle file
Output formats
Our tool offers three output formats:
- Plain text with timestamps — best for notes, research, reading
- .txt file — same content, downloadable
- .srt subtitle file — paste directly into video editors (Premiere, Final Cut, DaVinci Resolve)
Limitations
- Works only on videos with captions (auto-generated or uploaded)
- Auto-generated captions have ~5-10% error rate for technical terms, names, accents
- Doesn’t work on private videos
- Doesn’t work on age-restricted videos (without being logged in)
Better accuracy: creator-uploaded captions
If you need an accurate transcript and the video has both auto and creator-uploaded captions, our tool prefers the uploaded version. Look for the cc badge on the video — that means there’s a manual transcript available.
Privacy
Our YouTube Transcript tool runs entirely in your browser. YouTube’s video page is fetched, but we don’t store it or send it anywhere else. The transcript extraction happens client-side.
Related guides
- Need a transcript without timestamps? Same tool, default toggle.
- Need to download the audio? See our YouTube video summary tool (different scope).
- Working on SEO with transcripts? See our YouTube transcripts for SEO guide.