YouTube One-Click Transcript Copier
Adds a YouTube-style button to the video player control bar that copies the current video's transcript directly to your clipboard.
Features
- Adds a native-looking transcript button inside the YouTube player controls.
- Copies the current video's transcript with one click.
- Uses YouTube's own caption tracks.
- Does not rely on third-party transcript websites.
- Cleans copied transcript text before saving it to clipboard.
- Removes common caption artifacts such as:
- HTML entities like
'
- music/laughter markers
- repeated caption words
- extra whitespace
- Works with regular YouTube video pages and Shorts pages.
- Uses DOM-safe SVG creation instead of
innerHTML, avoiding Trusted Types issues on YouTube.
Usage
- Open a YouTube video.
- Look for the transcript icon near the right side of the YouTube player controls.
- Click the icon.
- The transcript is copied to your clipboard.
Button states:
- Normal document icon: ready
- Spinner: copying transcript
- Checkmark: transcript copied
- Error icon: transcript unavailable or failed
Requirements
- A userscript manager such as Tampermonkey, Violentmonkey, or a compatible alternative.
- The video must expose caption tracks through YouTube.
Permissions
This script requests the following permissions:
GM_setClipboard
Used to copy the transcript directly to your clipboard.
GM_xmlhttpRequest
Used as a fallback to fetch the YouTube watch page when YouTube's live page data does not expose player metadata.
unsafeWindow
Used to read YouTube's in-page player response when available.
@connect youtube.com
Allows the script to fetch YouTube watch-page metadata when needed.
Privacy
This script does not send video URLs or transcript data to any third-party transcript service.
Network requests are limited to YouTube domains needed to read caption metadata and caption tracks.
Limitations
This script cannot copy a transcript when:
- The video has no captions.
- The uploader disabled captions.
- YouTube does not expose caption tracks for the video.
- YouTube changes its internal caption/player data structure.
Some auto-generated transcripts may contain imperfect wording because they come directly from YouTube's caption system.
Troubleshooting
The button does not appear
Reload the YouTube page.
Make sure the script is enabled in your userscript manager and that the page URL matches one of these:
https://www.youtube.com/*
https://m.youtube.com/*
The button shows an error
The video may not have an exposed caption track.
Try another video with visible captions/transcript support.
YouTube becomes slow or fails to load
Disable the script temporarily in your userscript manager, reload YouTube, then report the issue with the browser console error.
Changelog
7.1.0
- Added transcript cleanup before copying.
- Added safer repeated-caption cleanup.
- Added HTML entity decoding.
- Added cleanup for common caption noise.
- Kept low-impact button installation to avoid interfering with YouTube's dynamic DOM.
7.0.0
- Rebuilt button injection to avoid full-document mutation loops.
- Removed
innerHTML usage to avoid Trusted Types errors.
- Removed third-party transcript service dependency.
- Used YouTube caption tracks directly.
- Added YouTube-style SVG icon states.
License
CC-BY-ND-2.0
