Media Caption
YouTube to VTT

Turn a supported public video
into a WebVTT file.

Paste a YouTube URL and download a .vtt caption file. Works with HTML5 video, course platforms, and most web-based players.

Web-native caption format.

WebVTT,
clean and standard.

Every export starts with the WEBVTT header and lists cues in the format HTML5 video players expect.

captions.vttWebVTT
WEBVTT

00:00:04.200 --> 00:00:07.900
Paste a YouTube URL to pull the spoken track
into a web-ready caption file.

00:00:08.100 --> 00:00:11.450
Point your HTML5 <track> at the VTT file and
captions show up in the player.

00:00:11.600 --> 00:00:14.900
Edit in any text editor, keep the timing,
swap the wording.

Where VTT
actually fits.

VTT is the format to pick when the caption track lives on the web, not inside a desktop editor.

Captions for HTML5 video players.

VTT is the web-native caption format — drop it into a <track> element and it just plays.

Accessibility on your embed page.

Give viewers a caption track on your own site, in the language and wording you want.

Course platforms and LMS videos.

Most modern course platforms support VTT uploads for lesson captions.

Styled captions with cue settings.

VTT supports positioning and styling hints if your player needs them later.

Questions, answered.

Both are plain-text subtitle formats. VTT (WebVTT) is the web-native format built for HTML5 video. SRT is the classic format used across most video editors.
Yes. Point a <track kind='subtitles' src='captions.vtt'> at the downloaded file and the browser handles it.
Yes. A free account includes 10 credits, enough for up to 10 minutes of AI transcription that you can export as VTT. Longer videos require additional credits.
Yes. Open it in any text editor and adjust cues, timing, or text.
Yes — and you can skip that step by exporting SRT directly from the same transcript.

Connect a VTT file to your web video

Export .vtt from the transcript card, then host the caption file beside the recording you are authorized to publish. A subtitle track describes text and timing; you still need a video source.

<video controls src="/media/lesson.mp4">
  <track
    kind="subtitles"
    src="/media/lesson.en.vtt"
    srclang="en"
    label="English"
    default
  />
</video>

Replace the example paths with your own files. Set srclang to the language actually used in the captions and give the track a readable label. For multiple languages, add a separate track and VTT file for each.

If captions do not appear

  • Open the VTT URL directly. It should return the file, not a sign-in page or a missing-file response. Configure your host to serve it as text/vtt.
  • Check for the WEBVTT header, a blank line after it, and cue timestamps with dots before milliseconds. Renaming SRT to VTT leaves the contents in the wrong format.
  • Enable the caption track in the player and test a moment covered by a cue. The recording must match the one used for the timestamps.
  • Start with video, captions and page on the same origin. Cross-origin files need compatible CORS settings on the host as well as the video element.

For deployment details, see the HTML track reference. Test keyboard access and caption selection in the browsers your audience uses.

Try the worked caption example and download sample files →

Keep going
with related tools.

Other ways to pull, convert, and reuse transcript content.

YouTube to SRT

Need the editor-standard subtitle format? Export SRT for Premiere, Final Cut, or CapCut.

Open

Download transcripts

Plain text, timestamped transcripts, SRT, and VTT from a single YouTube URL.

Open

Transcribe a video

AI speech-to-text when the YouTube transcript panel is empty.

Open

Get captions
ready for the web.

Paste a YouTube URL and export a VTT file. A free account includes 10 credits, enough for up to 10 minutes of AI transcription.

Public captions cost 1 credit per track, paid once.