§ Paste a video, read it as text

Facebook Video Transcript

Every word, with its timecode.

Paste a Facebook video link and get the full transcript, with a timecode on every line. When the uploader wrote captions we use their words; when they did not, we listen to the audio. Free, no sign-up, five videos a day. Then mark any line and take a vertical clip of it.

Free · No sign-up · Five a day

By continuing you confirm you have rights to this video.

§ What you get

  • The full text, broken into lines where the speaker paused
  • A timecode per line, so you can find the moment in the video
  • The uploader’s own captions when they exist — see below for why that matters
  • Copy the whole thing, or download it as .srt — plain text for a document, timecoded subtitles for an editor
  • One click to a vertical clip of any line, 9:16, no watermark

Works with every link shape Facebook uses: /watch/?v=…, a page’s /videos/… permalink, /reel/…, and fb.watch short links.

— i —
§ 01

Two kinds of transcript, and which one you get

The honest version of how it works

Some Facebook videos come with captions the uploader wrote. Publishers, brands and anyone who cares about accessibility upload a subtitle file with the video. When one is there, this reads it — and that transcript is better than any machine could produce, because it is not a guess at what was said. It is what the person who made the video says was said, with their spelling of names, their punctuation, their line breaks.

Most videos shot on a phone have none. For those, the audio goes through speech recognition, which returns text with sentences in it — capitals, full stops, commas where the speaker paused — but it can mishear a name or a technical term. If a word looks wrong, that is why.

You do not have to choose or check first. Paste the link and the better of the two is used automatically. It is also why this page has no queue and no waiting-room: a captioned video is read in seconds because nothing has to be listened to at all.

The five-a-day ceiling exists for the second case, where each video costs us a little compute. No account, no card, no email — the limit is the price.

— ii —
§ 02

What people do with it

Repurpose to a vertical platform

Facebook video is mostly landscape. Find the line that landed, mark it, and export it as a 9:16 clip with captions for Reels, Shorts or TikTok.

Quote a public statement accurately

Announcements and press events live on Facebook pages. Timecodes let you cite the moment rather than paraphrase it.

Read it without the sound

Facebook autoplays muted anyway. Reading is faster than watching for one fact.

Subtitle a video you posted

Download the .srt and upload it back to Facebook, so your own video gets the captions it was missing.

— iii —
§ 03

Straight answers

How do you get the transcript of a Facebook video?

Copy the video’s link from Facebook — the address bar on desktop, or Copy link in the share menu on the app — and paste it in the box above. You get the text back with a timecode on every line, and you can copy it or download it as a subtitle file. There is nothing to install and no account to make. Facebook itself has no button for this, which is why the question gets asked.

Is it really free?

Five videos a day per browser, no account and no card. Beyond that you can come back tomorrow, or buy credits if you also want to cut clips — the rate card is one page and has no asterisks.

Does it work on private videos?

No. If a video needs you to be signed in to Facebook to watch it, we cannot read it either — we have no account and use nobody’s session. Public videos and page posts work.

What about Instagram?

Not yet, and for the same reason: Instagram refuses to serve a reel without a signed-in session. We would rather say so than ship a page that fails on half its links.

Do you keep my transcripts?

The transcript is cached against the public video, not against you, so the next person who pastes the same link gets it free. Nothing is stored against your identity — there is no account here to store it against.