Best ways for downloading youtube subtitle / cc for free?

👤 Diwas Poudel 🕒 05 Nov 2020 📁 TECH

Download Youtube Subtitle

If we have internet and when we open a web browser then most of the time we open youtube and start looking video on a trending topic or search for desire video. As Alexa reports, youtube is the world's largest video hosting network and on the basis of traffic volume, it is in second place after google.

Sometimes the video you are looking for is not able to fully grasp the meaning of the video content because of the hard of hearing or language-related problem. To solve this we enabled subtitles in youtube by clicking on "CC" on the bottom right corner of the youtube video window. So, youtube subtitles are becoming an important part and helping to enhance the viewing experience.

what do you ever think that we can download subtitle that is in the video? Can we do that! If you think so then you are in the right place.

There are numerous methods and in this article, we will explain some best methods.

For this to work, the video whose subtitle you are trying to download must have a caption/subtitle.

Different Ways of Downloading Youtube Subtitle

Here are the different ways of downloading youtube subtitles.

Using Chrome Extensions for Chrome Browser
Using Websites
Using Transcript option of youtube video
Using Application
Using Browsing Console

1) Using Chrome Extensions For Chrome Browser.

Youtube Subtitle Downloader

Open Chrome Web Store then search "youtube subtitle downloader" in the search field then click on Add to Chrome. button.

Then go to the top right corner and click on the icon shown below. Then you will get the "Youtube Subtitle Downloader" window popup.

Then click on "Text Format" for downloading the text format of your youtube video. If you want to download text along with time then click on "Subtitle Format".

Subtitles For YouTube Extension
Seek Subtitles for YouTube Extension

2) Using Websites

a) savesubs websites

First, copy your youtube URL and go to savesubs.com sites and there you will find text field. Paste the copied URL and next click on the "Extract & Download " button. Then you will get a list of languages and download format(srt or txt) side by side. Then click on the "Download" button.

b) Downsub websites ( click here )

c) yousubtitles websites ( click here )

3) Using Transcript option of youtube video

If you want to use download youtube autogenerated subtitle using transcript option features of youtube:

Press the 3 dots under the video.
Then select "Open Transcript".
Then you will get a transcript of the video on the right side of the current video
Notice that we have a transcript along with timestamps and we have to remove it. So, On the same transcript section, click on 3 dots as shown below.
Then select "Toggle Timestamps" and you will get a transcript without timestamps.

4)Using Application

There is a various application found on the internet which can be used for downloading youtube video subtitle. Some of them are as follows.

4 a) dvdvideosoft Software

Download Subtitles from Youtube video using internet software like Free Youtube Subtitles Downloader App. It is very easy to use and currently, it is available only for Windows OS.

How to use it?

Click here to download DvdVideoSoft software
Install it and open the application
After that go to youtube and search for the video whose subtitle you want. Then just copy the youtube video URL as shown below.
Open DVD Video soft application and click on "File" then "Paste URL" in the application as shown below.

paste-it-in-dvdvideosoft-application

5. Now, video and its title application on the screen. Then at the top, you can select "txt" or "srt" format for the subtitle. Then click on download and wait for it to finish as shown below. Now, subtitles will get the download on the computer.

download-after-format-select

Features of dvdvideosoft Software

It provides both .txt and .srt format subtitles.
Compatible with most of the popular browsers.
The subtitles can be extracted from the whole text or certain intervals from the text.
Download any YouTube video subtitles with closed captions.
Add time information for long video file navigation.

4 b) VideoProc Software

4 c) Google2SRT Software

5) Using Browser Console and Developers tools

This approach can only be used if all previous approaches have failed because it may take more time and effort of getting subtitles.

Steps are as follows:

Open your desire youtube videos and press F12 to open console windows
Goto Network Tab and click on enables subtitles ( cc option )
In the table, find out the line name starting with the timedtext, and the hierarchy of subtitle elements is shown by clicking on it.
Then open the event section and pick the subsection "0" in the hierarchical elements and there select "segs" where you have to choose "0".This is the first subtitle line to be copied in a separate text document.
Repeat step 4, change only the subsection digit to the next (0, 1, 2 ...), to hit the next subtitle section.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q) Can YouTube automatically add subtitles?

Ans: Yes, youtube can automatically generate subtitles for the video. It uses speech recognization technology to auto-generate captions for the videos. The quality of this subtitle may vary. Some may give a proper translation to words and some don't.To prevent the double meaning of the videos subtitle, youtube request to provides captions first.

Q) How can I download YouTube subtitles on Android?

Ans: You can use the Keepvid android app and download youtube videos. Along with the video, its subtitle will also be downloaded.

There is also various other application you can use for downloading youtube subtitles: