Convert SBV to text
Pull the plain text out of a YouTube SBV caption file. It strips the timestamps and formatting and leaves just the words, ready to copy or save as a .txt. Nothing is uploaded; it runs in your browser.
SBV and plain text
SBV is the caption format you get when you download captions from YouTube Studio. Each cue is a start,end timing line followed by the caption text, with no cue numbers.
This tool reads those cues and gives you just the spoken words, dropping the timestamps and any formatting. You can keep the line breaks or reflow everything into continuous prose, then copy the result or download it as a .txt transcript.
FAQ
What is an SBV file?
SBV is YouTube's caption format, downloaded from YouTube Studio. Each cue is a 'start,end' timing line followed by the text. It's plain, with no styling or cue numbers.
Can I get flowing text instead of lines?
Yes. Choose 'Flowing text' to join everything into continuous paragraphs, or keep the original line breaks. Either way the timestamps are removed.
What about repeated lines from rolling captions?
When a line exactly repeats the one immediately before it, as YouTube auto-captions do when each new line scrolls in, the duplicate is dropped so the text doesn't echo. Lines that repeat but aren't back to back are kept, so genuinely repeated dialogue survives. Captions broken into rolling one- or two-word fragments are a different case; run those through the Clean YT Captions tool first.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. The text is extracted in your browser and your file never leaves your device.
Can I batch convert multiple files at once?
Yes. Drop several .sbv files together and they'll each be converted and returned in a single ZIP, all in your browser. It's the same conversion as single files, just in bulk.