YouTube Transcript Generator

Download and generate clean, readable transcripts from any YouTube video. Extracts subtitles (auto-generated or manual), removes timestamps and formatting, and outputs a clean paragraph-style transcript. Use when asked to transcribe, get transcript, or extract text from a YouTube video.

Download clean transcripts from any YouTube video URL.

Requirements

• yt-dlp must be installed (brew install yt-dlp or pip install yt-dlp)

Usage

Run the bundled script with a YouTube URL:

bash

bash scripts/get_transcript.sh "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

The script will:

1. Try to download English manual subtitles first
2. Fall back to auto-generated English subtitles
3. Try all available languages if English is unavailable
4. Clean the raw subtitle file into readable paragraphs
5. Output the transcript to stdout and save to transcript_VIDEO_ID.txt

Options

bash

# Save to a specific file
bash scripts/get_transcript.sh "URL" output.txt

# Get transcript WITH timestamps (default: without)
bash scripts/get_transcript.sh "URL" output.txt en timestamps

# Get transcript in a specific language
bash scripts/get_transcript.sh "URL" output.txt fr

How It Works

1. yt-dlp downloads the subtitle track (VTT/SRT format)
2. The script strips HTML tags and duplicate lines
3. Without timestamps (default): merges into clean, readable paragraphs
4. With timestamps: preserves [HH:MM:SS] markers before each line for easy reference

Example Output

Input: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMTxOecbyPg

Output:

text

How OpenClaw Runs My Entire Business. I record a podcast episode and that is
literally the only thing I do. Everything else is handled by 13 AI agents
running on a Mac Mini in my office...

Troubleshooting

• No subtitles found: Not all videos have subtitles. The script will report which languages are available.
• yt-dlp not found: Install with brew install yt-dlp (macOS) or pip install yt-dlp.
• Rate limited: Wait a moment and retry. YouTube occasionally throttles subtitle requests.

Links

• Full guides and templates: OpenClaw Lab
• Free OpenClaw installer: installopenclawnow.com
• Community: OpenClaw Lab on Skool