YouTube Transcript App for Mac

Why use a native Mac app instead of a website or extension

Most YouTube transcript tools on the web either crash on long videos, rate-limit you after a couple of tries, or require sign-up. The browser extension route works, but you grant the extension access to every page you visit, you depend on Chrome staying compatible, and the extension breaks when YouTube changes its DOM.

A native Mac app sidesteps all of that. Vidgest fetches transcripts directly. The video URL is the only thing you provide. Output stays on your Mac in a local SQLite library. AI analysis is opt-in and only sends the transcript text to your chosen provider when you press the button.

How to get a YouTube transcript on Mac with Vidgest

1. Install from the Mac App Store

Download Vidgest from the Mac App Store. It is free, signed by Apple, and sandboxed. Requires macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later. Apple Silicon and Intel both supported.

2. Paste a YouTube URL

Open Vidgest, paste any YouTube URL into the input field, and press Enter. The app fetches the transcript and shows it in a scrollable view with timestamp markers. Full-length lectures, podcasts, and multi-hour livestreams work. Videos without captions and videos with the transcript disabled by the creator are the only cases that cannot be fetched.

3. Read, search, or export

Search within the transcript with Cmd+F. Click any timestamp to jump back to that moment on YouTube. Export to TXT on the free tier, or to PDF, Markdown, SRT, VTT, and JSON on Pro. The Markdown export is useful for Obsidian and Bear, and SRT/VTT keep the timestamps for use as subtitle files.

4. Optional: run an AI summary

If you want a summary, chapters, or key takeaways, press the AI button. The free tier gives 3 AI analyses per day. Pro gives 500 per month. Max ($49.99 one-time) lets you bring your own API key for Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, or OpenAI and pay the provider directly.

Other ways to get a YouTube transcript on Mac

YouTube's own transcript panel

YouTube itself has a Show transcript option in the description menu under each video. It works, but the output is not easy to export, the timestamps are interleaved awkwardly, and there is no batch capability. Fine for one video, painful for ten.

Browser extensions

Several Chrome extensions offer transcript download. They work in the moment, but the extension gets permission to read every page in your browser. They also break periodically when YouTube updates its layout. If your IT environment blocks extension installs, this path is closed.

Manual copy from the transcript panel

You can open the YouTube transcript panel, select all, and copy. The format is messy, the timestamps are inline, and a 90-minute video produces a wall of text. Use this only if you cannot install anything else.

What about long videos?

Vidgest does not have a length cap. Multi-hour lectures, full podcasts, and livestream replays fetch the same way as a 5-minute clip. The export will simply be longer. The AI summary tools are tuned to handle long inputs, and you can run a summary, then chapters, then key takeaways on the same transcript without re-fetching.

Batch and bulk workflows

If you have a backlog of saved videos or a course playlist to work through, paste 50 or more URLs into Vidgest at once. The batch queue handles pacing and rate-limit backoff on its own. You can switch apps and come back. There is more detail on this on the batch YouTube transcripts page.

Privacy

Vidgest stores everything in a local SQLite library on your Mac. There is no cloud sync, no account, and no server-side history of your transcripts. AI analysis is the only step that leaves your machine, and only when you press the AI button. At that point the transcript text is sent to the provider you chose. The video file itself is never uploaded by Vidgest because it never has the file in the first place; only the YouTube URL.

Frequently asked questions