Watch YouTube with an interactive transcript

Every sentence in the transcript is a link into the video. Click one and playback moves to that moment, which makes it easy to replay a sentence you missed or to start from a quote you found by reading.

Auto-scroll is on when the page opens: as the video plays, the current sentence is highlighted and the transcript scrolls to keep it in view. Scroll away to read ahead and auto-scroll pauses; a Jump to current button (or the J key) brings you back to the spoken line and turns it on again. A switches auto-scroll on or off. On a phone, the Auto button below the video does the same.

Transcripts are split into chapters, usually with a one- or two-sentence summary each. On desktop they sit in a sidebar beside the transcript, with the current chapter marked; ⌘\ (Ctrl+\ on Windows) hides or shows it. On a phone they're in a chapter list. Click a chapter to jump to its start. Chapters come with the transcript, including ones built from a video's captions.

The video is YouTube's own player, so speed is set in its settings menu (the gear icon), up to 2x. The transcript follows whatever speed you pick, so you can listen fast and read along, or pause and read a passage in full. On a phone you can hide the video to give the transcript the whole screen.

Anything already in the library opens with its transcript straight away, no account needed: try the lectures or podcasts. For a new video, a free account lets you request a transcript, built from the video's YouTube captions. Videos without captions can't be transcribed yet; see when a video has no captions.