Get the Transcript of Any YouTube Short

Copy the link of the Short, from the address bar or from the Share button in the YouTube app, and paste it into the box above. Click Get Transcript. Scrivi reads the Short's caption track and shows the full spoken text, ready to read or copy.

There is no account, no download, and no browser extension involved. Because Scrivi reads text that already exists instead of listening to the audio, the transcript appears in seconds. Without an account you can do this for 3 videos a day.

Both link formats work: youtube.com/shorts/ links and the youtu.be links the mobile app shares. Scrivi resolves them like any other YouTube video.

YouTube generates captions automatically for most videos with speech in a supported language, and Shorts are no exception. That auto-generated track is what Scrivi reads. If the creator uploaded their own captions, Scrivi uses those instead, since they are usually cleaner.

Some Shorts have nothing to read. Music-only clips, videos with no speech, and Shorts in languages YouTube does not auto-caption carry no caption track at all. In that case the instant widget shows a clear note instead of empty text. A Short with speech but no captions can still be transcribed from the audio with the $2.99 Day Pass or a Pro plan.

A Short lasts under a minute, but people still want it as text. Reading is faster than replaying, and text can be studied, compared, and reused.

The widget on this page needs nothing from you: no email, no card. It is limited to 3 videos a day per visitor, which keeps the free path sustainable. The URL you paste is used to fetch the caption track and nothing else.

A free Scrivi account raises the limit to 20 caption transcriptions a day across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X, and Facebook, and adds saved history, full-text search across your transcripts, and 3 AI summaries a day. Each summary gives you a short overview, key points, and topics, which is handy when you transcribe a batch of Shorts and want the common thread.

Paid plans add AI audio transcription for videos without captions, exports as PDF, .txt, or .md, Ask AI, batch transcription of up to 10 links, collections, and research reports across 2 to 5 transcripts. The Day Pass gives you all of that for 24 hours for $2.99; Pro is $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year.

Short-form research rarely stops at one platform. The same trend shows up as a Short, a TikTok, and a Reel within days. In a Scrivi account the same paste box handles all of them, so you can keep the scripts together and compare them.

The difference is captions. YouTube Shorts usually have an auto-generated track and come back free. TikToks and Instagram Reels often have none, and those need the Day Pass or Pro for audio transcription. Scrivi tells you which path a video needs before anything is charged.

A 40-second Short feels too short to need a transcript, until you watch it for the fifth time to catch one phrase. The script of a Short is dense: a hook in the first line, a claim or a twist in the middle, a call to action at the end. On paper you see that structure at a glance, which is hard to do while the video loops.

Text also travels better. You can paste ten hooks into one document, mark the patterns, and write your own variations next to them. You can quote a creator accurately instead of paraphrasing from memory. And you can search your saved transcripts later for a phrase you half remember, which no video feed lets you do.

If you research Shorts every week, a free account keeps every transcript in one searchable history, so your swipe file builds itself as you go.

When you turn your findings into something bigger, such as a script series, a content plan, or a talk, the Day Pass or Pro adds research reports. Put 2 to 5 transcripts into a collection and Scrivi writes one document with the shared themes and the angles that differ, which is a quick way to see what a whole niche is saying.

A few habits make Shorts transcription smoother.