Read any YouTube video — timestamped, on your Mac
Paste a link. Player on the left, timestamped transcript on the right, kept in sync. Captions load instantly; nothing is uploaded.
Download for MacPaste, read, click to seek
Instant captions
Drop a URL and read a scrollable, timestamped transcript in seconds — before any audio is processed.
Click any line
The player jumps to that moment; a floating play button follows your scroll so you always start “from here”.
Speaker labels on demand
One button runs the on-device pipeline — Parakeet-TDT plus diarization — for a speaker-labelled transcript.
Not just another transcript site
Most online tools post a URL to a server and hand back plain text. Vocateca is a native macOS app built for working with a lot of audio.
| Vocateca | Typical online tools | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | On your Mac — URL and audio never leave it | Server-side — your link and audio hit their servers |
| Timestamps | Core: every segment timed, click to seek | Often optional or plain-text only |
| Speaker labels | Yes — on-device diarization, carried into CSV | Rare |
| No captions? | Falls back to real on-device transcription | Usually fails — captions only |
| Export formats | md, txt, srt, vtt, csv, json, okf | Plain text, sometimes SRT |
| Beyond one video | Playlists, channel subscribe, auto-download | One video at a time |
| Automation | Built-in CLI + MCP transcript command | Web UI or a paid API |
| Account | None — no sign-up, no credits | Often sign-up or metered credits |
What we leave out, on purpose: No browser extension, no cloud chat, no server API, no AI summaries — off-model for a native, private app. Vocateca does one job well: clean, structured text out of the audio you follow.
More than a single video
Every format, speakers included
Subtitles as VTT/SRT, structured segments as CSV/JSON, LLM-ready Markdown. CSV carries a speaker column when diarized on-device.
All export formats →Playlists, channels, daemon
Paste a playlist or a CSV of links to transcribe in bulk — or subscribe to a channel and let a daily daemon do it.
On-device, no account
Captions from YouTube, transcription local on Apple Silicon, transcript stays on your Mac unless you export it.
How privacy works →Scriptable, and usable by AI agents
The same extraction is a command-line tool and — automatically — an MCP tool your AI assistant can call.
Vocateca's MCP server is derived from its CLI, so transcript shows up as a tool in Claude with no extra setup.
See LLM workflows →Extract a timestamped transcript
$ vocateca transcript "https://youtube.com/watch?v=…" --format vtt
WEBVTT
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.120
Hello and welcome
…