YouTube to Markdown
Turn a video's transcript into clean, AI-ready Markdown — with or without timestamps.
How to convert a YouTube video to Markdown
- Install the free Web2MD extension, then open any YouTube video that has captions — either creator-uploaded subtitles or YouTube's auto-generated ones.
- Click the Web2MD icon (or press Alt+M). The transcript is pulled from the page you are already watching, so videos that block server-side scrapers still work.
- Choose whether to keep timestamps, then copy the Markdown or send it straight to ChatGPT or Claude. The video title and channel are kept as a heading so the source stays attributable.
Why convert YouTube transcripts to Markdown?
A 40-minute talk is roughly 6,000 words of speech. Pasting that as an unbroken wall of text wastes tokens and buries the argument — the model has no headings, no paragraphs, and no way to tell a tangent from the thesis. Markdown restores that structure so you can summarise, quote, or fact-check a specific passage.
Copying a transcript from YouTube's own panel glues a timestamp to every line, which the model then treats as content. Web2MD strips them on request, or keeps them as clean anchors when you actually need to cite a moment in the video.
Because the extension reads the page you already have open, it works on videos where server-side transcript APIs get blocked or rate-limited — and it never asks for your YouTube credentials.
YouTube to Markdown — FAQ
Does it work on videos without subtitles?
It needs captions to exist — either uploaded by the creator or auto-generated by YouTube. If a video has captions disabled entirely there is no transcript to convert. Web2MD does not transcribe audio itself.
Can I keep the timestamps?
Yes, it is a toggle. Keep them when you need to cite a specific moment; strip them when you are feeding the transcript to an AI model, where they only consume tokens.
Do auto-generated captions convert well?
They convert cleanly, but they are machine transcription — expect occasional wrong words on names and jargon. The Markdown structure is accurate; the words are only as good as YouTube's speech recognition.
Is it free?
Yes for everyday use. The free plan covers regular conversions; paid plans exist for heavy batch work.
Converting an ordinary web page instead? Use the website to Markdown converter. For PDFs, try PDF to Markdown. Site-specific guides live in the convert hub.