YouTube Transcript/Subtitle API (including automatically generated subtitles and subtitle translations)

This is a python API which allows you to get the transcript/subtitles for a given YouTube video. It also works for automatically generated subtitles, supports translating subtitles and it does not require a headless browser, like other selenium based solutions do!

Install

It is recommended to install this module by using pip:

pip install youtube_transcript_api

If you want to use it from source, you'll have to install the dependencies manually:

pip install -r requirements.txt

You can either integrate this module into an existing application, or just use it via an CLI.

API

The easiest way to get a transcript for a given video is to execute:

from youtube_transcript_api import YouTubeTranscriptApi

YouTubeTranscriptApi.get_transcript(video_id)

This will return a list of dictionaries looking somewhat like this:

[
    {
        'text': 'Hey there',
        'start': 7.58,
        'duration': 6.13
    },
    {
        'text': 'how are you',
        'start': 14.08,
        'duration': 7.58
    },
    # ...
]

You can also add the languages param if you want to make sure the transcripts are retrieved in your desired language (it defaults to english).

YouTubeTranscriptApi.get_transcripts(video_ids, languages=['de', 'en'])

It's a list of language codes in a descending priority. In this example it will first try to fetch the german transcript ('de') and then fetch the english transcript ('en') if it fails to do so. If you want to find out which languages are available first, have a look at list_transcripts()

To get transcripts for a list of video ids you can call:

YouTubeTranscriptApi.get_transcripts(video_ids, languages=['de', 'en'])

languages also is optional here.

List available transcripts

If you want to list all transcripts which are available for a given video you can call:

transcript_list = YouTubeTranscriptApi.list_transcripts(video_id)

This will return a TranscriptList object which is iterable and provides methods to filter the list of transcripts for specific languages and types, like:

transcript = transcript_list.find_transcript(['de', 'en'])

By default this module always picks manually created transcripts over automatically created ones, if a transcript in the requested language is available both manually created and generated. The TranscriptList allows you to bypass this default behaviour by searching for specific transcript types:

# filter for manually created transcripts
transcript = transcript_list.find_manually_created_transcript(['de', 'en'])

# or automatically generated ones
transcript = transcript_list.find_generated_transcript(['de', 'en'])

The methods find_generated_transcript, find_manually_created_transcript, find_generated_transcript return Transcript objects. They contain metadata regarding the transcript:

print(
    transcript.video_id,
    transcript.language,
    transcript.language_code,
    # whether it has been manually created or generated by YouTube
    transcript.is_generated,
    # whether this transcript can be translated or not
    transcript.is_translatable,
    # a list of languages the transcript can be translated to
    transcript.translation_languages,
)

and provide the method, which allows you to fetch the actual transcript data:

transcript.fetch()

Translate transcript

YouTube has a feature which allows you to automatically translate subtitles. This module also makes it possible to access this feature. To do so Transcript objects provide a translate() method, which returns a new translated Transcript object:

transcript = transcript_list.find_transcript(['en'])
translated_transcript = transcript.translate('de')
print(translated_transcript.fetch())

By example

# retrieve the available transcripts
transcript_list = YouTubeTranscriptApi.list_transcripts('video_id')

# iterate over all available transcripts
for transcript in transcript_list:

    # the Transcript object provides metadata properties
    print(
        transcript.video_id,
        transcript.language,
        transcript.language_code,
        # whether it has been manually created or generated by YouTube
        transcript.is_generated,
        # whether this transcript can be translated or not
        transcript.is_translatable,
        # a list of languages the transcript can be translated to
        transcript.translation_languages,
    )

    # fetch the actual transcript data
    print(transcript.fetch())

    # translating the transcript will return another transcript object
    print(transcript.translate('en').fetch())

# you can also directly filter for the language you are looking for, using the transcript list
transcript = transcript_list.find_transcript(['de', 'en'])  

# or just filter for manually created transcripts  
transcript = transcript_list.find_manually_created_transcript(['de', 'en'])  

# or automatically generated ones  
transcript = transcript_list.find_generated_transcript(['de', 'en'])

CLI

Execute the CLI script using the video ids as parameters and the results will be printed out to the command line:

youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> ...  

The CLI also gives you the option to provide a list of preferred languages:

youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> ... --languages de en  

You can also specify if you want to exclude automatically generated or manually created subtitles:

youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> ... --languages de en --exclude-generated
youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> ... --languages de en --exclude-manually-created

If you would prefer to write it into a file or pipe it into another application, you can also output the results as json using the following line:

youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> ... --languages de en --json > transcripts.json  

Translating transcripts using the CLI is also possible:

youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> ... --languages en --translate de

If you are not sure which languages are available for a given video you can call, to list all available transcripts:

youtube_transcript_api --list-transcripts <first_video_id>

If a video's ID starts with a hyphen you'll have to mask the hyphen using \ to prevent the CLI from mistaking it for a argument name. For example to get the transcript for the video with the ID -abc123 run:

youtube_transcript_api "\-abc123"

Proxy

You can specify a https/http proxy, which will be used during the requests to YouTube:

from youtube_transcript_api import YouTubeTranscriptApi  

YouTubeTranscriptApi.get_transcript(video_id, proxies={"http": "http://user:[email protected]:port", "https": "https://user:[email protected]:port"})  

As the proxies dict is passed on to the requests.get(...) call, it follows the format used by the requests library.

Using the CLI:

youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> --http-proxy http://user:[email protected]:port --https-proxy https://user:[email protected]:port  

Cookies

Some videos are age restricted, so this module won't be able to access those videos without some sort of authentication. To do this, you will need to have access to the desired video in a browser. Then, you will need to download that pages cookies into a text file. You can use the Chrome extension cookies.txt or the Firefox extension cookies.txt.

Once you have that, you can use it with the module to access age-restricted videos' captions like so.

from youtube_transcript_api import YouTubeTranscriptApi  

YouTubeTranscriptApi.get_transcript(video_id, cookies='/path/to/your/cookies.txt')

YouTubeTranscriptApi.get_transcripts([video_id], cookies='/path/to/your/cookies.txt')

Using the CLI:

youtube_transcript_api <first_video_id> <second_video_id> --cookies /path/to/your/cookies.txt

Warning

This code uses an undocumented part of the YouTube API, which is called by the YouTube web-client. So there is no guarantee that it won't stop working tomorrow, if they change how things work. I will however do my best to make things working again as soon as possible if that happens. So if it stops working, let me know!

Donation

If this project makes you happy by reducing your development time, you can make me happy by treating me to a cup of coffee :)