YouTube Transcript With Timestamps: Get or Remove Them

Timestamps turn a transcript into a map of the video: you can see exactly when something is said and jump straight to it. But when you paste the text into a document, the same timestamps get in the way. Here is how to get a YouTube transcript with timestamps, how to remove them, and a few useful things you can do with them.

How to get a transcript with timestamps

1. Paste the video link into our YouTube Video Transcript Generator.
2. Keep Timestamps ticked. Each line starts with its time, such as 4:32.
3. Click a timestamp to play the video from that exact moment in the player beside the transcript.
4. Press Copy, or use Download → Text (.txt). Timestamps are written as [4:32] at the start of each line.

In Paragraphs view you get one timestamp per paragraph instead of one per line, which is often easier to read and share.

How to get a transcript without timestamps

Untick Timestamps before copying or downloading. The text is exported as plain sentences. Combined with Paragraphs view, this gives you text that reads like an article, ready for notes, a blog post or an AI summary.

If you already have a transcript full of timestamps from somewhere else, you can strip them in most text editors with find-and-replace using a regular expression. For example, \[?\d{1,2}:\d{2}(:\d{2})?\]?\s* matches times like 4:32, [12:05] and 1:02:45.

Which timestamp format do you need?

SRT and VTT always keep the start and end time of every caption, regardless of the Timestamps setting. Learn more in how to download YouTube subtitles as SRT.

Turn timestamps into YouTube chapters

If it is your own video, timestamps from the transcript make it easy to add chapters:

1. Read the transcript and note where each new topic starts.
2. In your video description, list the times with a short title, starting with 0:00:

   0:00 Intro
   1:45 What you need
   4:32 Step 1: Prepare the dough
   9:10 Common mistakes

3. YouTube turns the list into chapters automatically when there are at least three, each at least 10 seconds long, and the first starts at 0:00.

Chapters help viewers skip to what they need and can appear in Google search results as “key moments”.

Other uses for timestamps

• Podcast show notes: list the main topics with times so listeners can jump around.
• Citations: point readers to the exact moment of a quote. See how to cite a YouTube video.
• Study notes: keep timestamps so you can rewatch the part of a lecture you did not understand.
• Sharing a moment: add &t=272s to a YouTube link to start playback at 4:32.

Frequently Asked Questions