Over the years, YouTube has made many quality-of-life enhancements; one of them being captions/subtitles. They have continued to add support for multiple languages to ensure that everyone from any part of the world can use this essential feature. So today, we’ll be learning how to download the subtitles of a YouTube video.
Why Would We Need to Download Subtitles from a YouTube Video?
Downloading YouTube videos is easy enough with converters, but they will lack captions. Whether you’re a freelancer writing scripts or simply a subtitle enthusiast (they exist), the following steps helps you download subtitles for your favorite videos on YouTube so you can understand everything while chomping down on those snacks.
Prerequisites and Methods of Downloading a YouTube Video’s Subtitles
There is really only one requirement of downloading a YouTube video’s subtitles; it has to have subtitles. They can be auto-generated or added by the channel itself. You can ensure that the video has subtitles. by checking for the ‘CC‘ button that appears at the bottom of the player.
Method 1: Extracting subtitles from the video transcript
Method 2: Using a website to download the subtitles
There are a lot of websites out there that can download subtitles from YouTube videos. We will be using one called YouSubtitles.
Open up the website in your browser of choice. A website for downloading subtitles of YouTube videos | YousubtitlesCopy the link of the video you want to download and paste it on the search bar of the website. Click on ‘Download’.Click on ‘Download’ after copying the video link on the search barThe website will successfully convert the subtitles into a ‘.srt’ file. Download it in the choice of your language. Select and download the subtitle in your desired languageYou can use Notepad to open ‘.srt’ files.Viewing a ‘.srt’ file in Notepad
Method 3: Using a Chrome extension
One of the nice things about Chrome is that it is built on the Chromium open-source engine that a lot of other browsers have adopted as well. So basically any extension that is designed for Chrome should work with all Chromium browsers, including Edge and Opera. We will be using Chrome itself for this tutorial, so anytime we refer to Chrome, do note that you can substitute it for any other up-to-date Chromium browser. Check out our list for the best browsers of 2023 if you’re trying to find one.
Conclusion
Downloading YouTube video subtitles is a pretty effortless task that only requires you to make use of the Internet and a few other tools. Make sure that the video has subtitles/captions to begin with. Also, we recommend downloading the subtitles in .srt format as it is the most commonly used file format for subtitles and is supported by a great many video playing apps such as VLC, etc. Click ‘Add extension‘ on the pop-up that appears. Remember that ethical considerations and copyright laws apply to downloading subtitles, as they are derivative work of the original content. You may need permission to download and distribute subtitles under certain conditions. But, broadly speaking, you should be good.
