youtube2txt

youtube2txt (YouTube Transcript Grabber) — A robust, locally-hosted tool to extract clean transcripts from any YouTube video. It runs on your own machine to bypass YouTube's IP blocks on public proxies, ensuring high reliability by using the powerful yt-dlp engine under the hood.

Important

This tool must run locally to avoid YouTube IP blocks. It uses your own IP, which YouTube trusts, so transcript fetches are far more reliable.

Features

• Reliable Fetching: Uses yt-dlp binaries to handle YouTube's latest anti-bot measures.
• Multi-language Transcripts: Fetch transcripts in different available languages when provided by YouTube.
• Instant Copy/Download: One-click copy to clipboard or download as .txt for LLM use.

What is yt-dlp?

yt-dlp is an open-source command-line tool for extracting info and media from YouTube and many other sites. Here, it powers transcript fetching and handles YouTube's anti-bot measures more reliably than typical web crawlers.

How to Use

Method 1: Desktop App (recommended)

Download the latest installer from GitHub Releases and launch the app. It starts the local server in the background. No Node or Python required.

Click the tray app icon to open the menu and launch the browser UI. (If port 3000 is busy, the app picks the next available port automatically.)

Method 2: Local Install by "quickstart" (recommended)

1. Install Node.js 20+ (includes npm): https://nodejs.org/
2. On macOS/Linux, install Python 3: https://www.python.org/downloads/
3. From the repo folder (use cd), run:

   npm run quickstart

This runs a preflight check, installs dependencies, and starts the server.

Method 3: Local Install Manually

npm install
npm start

To Restart: If you need to stop or restart the server, simply press Ctrl + C in your terminal to stop it, then run npm start again.
To Check: If you want to check dependencies, run:

npm run doctor

Method 4: Docker

If you already use Docker, you can run it without local Node/npm installs.
Requires Docker Desktop (or Docker Engine + Compose v2).

docker compose up --build

Configuration & Troubleshooting

Using the latest UI

Access the tool at http://localhost:3000, or use the hosted page which includes the latest UI updates:

• GitHub Pages: https://spacesoda.github.io/youtube2txt/
• Auto-connect to Local Server: https://spacesoda.github.io/youtube2txt/?apiBase=http://localhost:3000

Optional Environment Variables

• YTDLP_PATH: Use an existing yt-dlp binary from a custom path.
• YTDLP_COOKIES: Path to a cookies file for YouTube (helps with rate limits).
• HOST: Override the server host (default is 0.0.0.0).
• PORT: Override the server port (default is 3000).

Per-project Node Version

To keep Node isolated and avoid conflicts with other projects:

• nvm (macOS/Linux): run nvm install then nvm use (this repo includes .nvmrc).
• nvm-windows: https://github.com/coreybutler/nvm-windows
• Volta (macOS/Windows/Linux): https://volta.sh (this repo pins Node 20 via package.json).

Troubleshooting

• node: command not found or npm not found: install Node.js 20+ from https://nodejs.org/
• python3: command not found or Python was not found: install Python 3 (macOS/Linux only).
• EACCES or EPERM: permissions issue. Avoid sudo; try deleting node_modules and re-running.
• EADDRINUSE: port 3000 is busy. Run with PORT=3001 npm start.
• npm ERR! network: network or proxy issue. Try again or switch networks.

Building and Releasing

Build the App

To build the desktop app for your OS, install dependencies and run the build from the repo root:

nvm use
npm install
npm test
npm run dist

# On macOS only:
# Apple Silicon DMG only (fast local install)
npm run dist:mac-arm64
# Intel DMG only (fast local install)
npm run dist:mac-x64
# Updater artifacts for local update tests (latest-mac.yml + zip, can take quite a while)
npm run dist:mac-update-arm64
npm run dist:mac-update-x64

Build artifacts are written to dist/. The installer target depends on the OS you build on (macOS DMG, Windows NSIS, Linux AppImage).

Publishing a Release

To publish a new release with app files reliably included, use the following commands:

git tag v1.3.8
git push origin v1.3.8

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.