How to get a YouTube transcript
Paste the link, get the whole spoken text back. Then keep the part of it that was actually worth watching.
YouTube hides its own transcript behind a menu, strips the timing when you copy it, and gives you nothing but a wall of text once you do. Drop takes the link and reads the video properly: captions when the uploader published them, straight speech to text when they did not. What comes back is the full transcript plus the ideas the video was built on, so you can act on a twenty minute video in about a minute of reading.
Steps
Step 1
Copy the video link
Open the video and copy the URL from the address bar, or tap Share and Copy link. Short youtu.be links work, so do links with a timestamp on the end, and so do Shorts.
Step 2
Paste it into Drop
Drop the link into the input on the homepage and press Drop it. No account, no browser extension, nothing to install.
Step 3
Let it read the audio
If the video carries captions, Drop pulls them. If it does not, or the captions are auto generated garbage, the audio gets transcribed directly instead.
Step 4
Keep what mattered
Read the core ideas, skim the remember list, then send the best lines straight to the card studio or to a post draft.
What you get
- The full spoken transcript, downloadable as plain text
- Core ideas written as plain sentences, not bullet soup
- A short remember list of the things worth keeping
- Three to six pull quotes you can turn into branded cards
- Post ready drafts for X, LinkedIn and Instagram
Questions
- Does it work on YouTube Shorts?
- Yes. Shorts run on the same path as full length videos and usually come back in seconds because the audio is short.
- What if the creator disabled captions?
- Then the audio is transcribed directly. Disabled or missing captions do not block anything.
- How long a video can I drop?
- Long form is fine. Multi hour interviews and lectures run on an extended job window and keep polling until the text is ready.
- Can I transcribe a private or unlisted video?
- Unlisted videos work if the link opens for anyone who has it. Fully private videos do not, because nothing can reach the audio. Download the file and upload it instead.
- What does it cost?
- Pay as you go. One credit covers one minute of material and credits never expire, so a ten minute video costs ten credits whether you use them today or next year.