Show HN: A YouTube transcript API that survives YouTube's bot war
A developer introduced a YouTube transcript API designed to remain functional despite YouTube's ongoing anti-bot measures. The API aims to reliably extract video transcripts where other tools may fail due to the platform's bot detection efforts.
Background
- ytranscript.com is a new API service that extracts text transcripts from YouTube videos, designed to keep working despite YouTube's increasingly aggressive anti-bot measures.
- YouTube has been escalating a "bot war" — actively blocking third-party tools (like many AI assistants, research scrapers, and accessibility apps) that try to download transcripts without using YouTube's own paid API.
- This matters because transcript data is essential for training AI models, powering accessibility tools (e.g., caption readers), and enabling researchers to analyze video content at scale. YouTube's restrictions have made these uses much harder.
- The "Show HN" tag indicates this was posted on Hacker News, a popular tech community, as a maker sharing a project for feedback — not a press release. The implied audience is developers who need reliable, low-cost access to YouTube transcripts.