Find a Moment in a Transcript

Paste a transcript to find a phrase and jump to its timestamp.

Find it in text you have

Paste a transcript or open a caption file you are allowed to use. Many YouTube videos show one under Show transcript in the description. Your text stays in this browser tab.

How it works

  1. 1

    Bring the transcript

    Paste text you are allowed to use, or open a caption file you have. Keep the times in.

  2. 2

    Search for the words

    Press a line to use it. Press a second line to take everything between them.

  3. 3

    Use the moment

    Copy the times, or add the video's link and get a link that plays only that part.

An example

You remember a cooking video saying something about hot water, and that is all. Search for water and one line is left:

0:09 first the flour, about five hundred grams
0:15 then warm water, not hot, or it kills the yeast
0:21 stir until there is no dry flour left

Press it and the moment runs from 0:15 to 0:21, where the next line starts. Words split over two lines still match, on the line they begin on.

Questions

Can it search any video?

No. It searches the text you give it and never reads a video or fetches captions. A video needs a transcript for you to copy, and YouTube only has one for a video with captions.

Is my transcript sent anywhere?

No. It is read and searched in this browser tab, and it is gone when you leave. It is not stored or sent to Playback, and it is not in the link you copy. That link holds the video's id and two times.

Where do I get a transcript?

Many YouTube videos show one under Show transcript in the description, and captions from your own channel can be downloaded in YouTube Studio. This page never fetches a transcript and cannot tell you whether you may copy one, so use text you are allowed to use. If a phone will not let you select lines, try a computer.

What can I open besides pasted text?

A .txt, .srt or .vtt file you have, such as captions you wrote or downloaded from your own channel in YouTube Studio. The file is opened in your browser, not uploaded. The limit is 5 MB.

Why is there no start and end for my text?

A start needs a time in the video, and some text has none. Search still works on it, but nothing is guessed. If it came from YouTube, make sure the times are showing and copy it again.

How exact are the times?

To the second at best. A transcript line's time is when that line begins, and its end is where the next line starts. The very last line has nothing after it, so its end is an estimate, and the page says so.

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