The YouTube transcript Chrome extension
This site converts a video you paste into it. The extension does the same work without the pasting — it sits beside the video you are already watching — and it does one thing this site cannot: it dubs the audio into your language while the video plays.
Or paste a link below to use it here, without installing anything. Dubbing is the one thing that needs the extension.
Free · no sign-up · unlimited
How it works
Install it
Add it from the Chrome Web Store. It asks for access to youtube.com and nothing else.
Open any video
A panel appears beside the video with the transcript already loaded. Click any line to jump the player there.
Summarise, ask or dub
Summarise the transcript, ask it questions, or pick a language and hear the video dubbed as it plays.
What the extension does that a website cannot
Live dubbing is the honest answer, and the reason is technical rather than commercial. Dubbing means playing a translated voice track in time with a video that is playing somewhere else — which requires being on the page, watching the player's clock and reacting to every pause and seek. A website cannot reach into a YouTube tab to do that. The extension runs inside the page, so it can.
The second is that nothing has to be pasted. The transcript is already there when the video opens, which sounds small until you have done it forty times in an afternoon.
| This website | The extension | |
|---|---|---|
| Transcript with timestamps | Yes | Yes |
| AI summary, notes, chat | Yes | Yes |
| Translate into 50+ languages | Yes | Yes |
| Listen to AI notes read aloud | Yes | Yes |
| Runs beside the video, nothing to paste | No | Yes |
| Live dubbing over the playing video | No | Yes |
| Works without installing anything | Yes | No |
Summaries that run on your own machine
Chrome ships a language model with the browser, and the extension uses it. That means the free summary costs nothing to run, needs no API key and no account, and the transcript never leaves the computer it was read on.
It has limits, and they are worth knowing before you meet them. The model needs roughly 22 GB of free disk and 4 GB of video memory, and it downloads once on first use — several gigabytes, which the extension now says out loud instead of appearing to hang. Where it will not run, summaries fall back to an on-device extractive method that needs none of that.
A subscription swaps the local model for a 70B one on the server, which has a far larger context window and produces better summaries of long videos. That is the actual difference between the tiers: not permission to summarise, but which model answers.
Dubbing, and what it is not
The extension translates the video's caption track into the language you pick, generates speech from the translation, and plays it in time with the video while lowering the original audio. You can adjust how much of the original you still hear, or stop and return to it instantly.
It is not a re-recording and it does not claim to be. Voices are synthesised, timing follows the caption track's own segment boundaries, and a video whose captions are wrong will be dubbed wrongly — machine captions on accented or overlapping speech are the usual cause. It is meant for understanding a video you could not otherwise follow, not for publishing.
Which one should you use
If you are watching the video anyway, use the extension: the transcript is already open and dubbing is available. If you have a link and want a transcript or a set of notes without installing anything, this site is faster.
A subscription covers both. The same account works in the browser and in the extension, matched by the address you signed in with.
What this can't do
- Live dubbing requires the extension. A website cannot play audio in sync with a video in another tab.
- Dubbing quality is bounded by the caption track — machine captions on accented or overlapping speech produce a poor dub.
- On-device AI needs roughly 22 GB free disk and 4 GB of VRAM, and downloads once on first use. Where it will not run, summaries use an extractive fallback.
- Videos with no captions at all cannot be transcribed yet, in either the extension or the website.
- The extension works on youtube.com only.
Frequently asked questions
Is the extension free?
- Reading transcripts is free and needs no account. On-device AI summaries and chat are free and unmetered, because they run on your machine and cost nothing to serve. A subscription adds a 70B server model, unlimited conversions, natural Neural2 voices and every export format.
Can this website dub a video?
- No. Dubbing plays a translated voice track in time with a video as it plays, which requires running inside the YouTube page. Only the extension can do it. This site transcribes, summarises, translates and reads AI notes aloud.
Does my transcript get uploaded anywhere?
- Not for the free on-device summary — Chrome's built-in model runs locally and the text does not leave your computer. Subscriber summaries are generated on a server, so that text is sent to it.
What does it need access to?
- youtube.com, and the endpoints it uses for translation, speech and checking your subscription. It does not read other sites.
Does it work on videos without captions?
- Not yet. The transcript comes from the video's caption track, so a video with none cannot be transcribed. Most videos on YouTube have at least machine-generated captions.
How many languages does dubbing support?
- Over 50 for translation, with synthesised speech in the widely spoken ones. The language picker sits on the video player itself.