How to Transcribe a YouTube Video or URL

Instead of downloading a video manually before transcribing it, you can paste a URL directly into ScribeForge and let it handle the rest.

How it works

1. Open Transcribe and switch to the Paste URL tab.
2. Paste a link — YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Twitter/X and 1,800+ other sites are supported, powered by the open-source yt-dlp tool.
3. ScribeForge downloads the audio in the background, then transcribes it locally with Whisper — the same engine used for local files.
4. Your transcript appears exactly as it would for an uploaded file, with timestamps and full editing.

First-time setup

The first time you use URL transcription, ScribeForge needs to set up yt-dlp. You'll see a one-time setup card in Settings → General under "URL transcription tool" — click through it once and URL transcription works from then on.

This is a Pro feature

URL and YouTube transcription (url_ingest) is included on paid plans, not the free tier. If you're on the free plan, you can still transcribe YouTube content by downloading the video yourself and dropping the file into the File upload tab instead — see How to Transcribe an Audio or Video File.

Why this beats YouTube's auto-captions

YouTube's built-in captions are convenient but often mishear names, jargon and fast speech. Because ScribeForge transcribes the actual audio with Whisper, you get a materially more accurate transcript — plus SRT/VTT export and AI-generated chapters and descriptions that YouTube doesn't offer. More on this on the YouTube to text page.