YTTranscriptGrabber

Safari Web Extension that captures the transcript visible in the YouTube transcript panel and makes it easy to copy, download, or preview.

Features

• Scrapes every visible transcript segment (timestamp + text) from the transcript drawer.
• Automatically captures the video title, channel/creator, and page URL.
• One-click Markdown export ready for Obsidian – creators are wrapped in [[double brackets]], timestamps stay inline.
• Copy, open, or download the Markdown (Safari falls back gracefully when the downloads API is missing).
• Ships as an Xcode project ready for macOS Safari, with the raw web-extension sources kept alongside for Chrome/Chromium testing.

Repository Layout

• YTTranscriptGrabber/ – Xcode project generated via safari-web-extension-converter. All Safari-specific configuration lives here.
  • Shared (Extension)/Resources/ – Manifest, scripts, popup UI, and icons for the web extension target.
  • Shared (App)/ and platform-specific folders – Boilerplate app shells created by Xcode so you can build & run the extension container.
• YTTranscriptGrabber-chrome/ – The same extension assets in a Chromium-friendly layout (manifest v3). Useful for quick testing in Chrome/Edge.
• initial.txt – Original bootstrapping script that scaffolded the project (kept for provenance).

Build & Run on Safari (macOS)

1. Open YTTranscriptGrabber/YTTranscriptGrabber.xcodeproj in Xcode 14 or later.
2. Select the YTTranscriptGrabber (macOS) scheme.
3. Set your signing team (Project > Signing & Capabilities) if Xcode prompts.
4. Build & Run (⌘R). Xcode will launch the lightweight host app that prompts you to enable the extension.
5. Open Safari → Settings… → Extensions, enable YTTranscriptGrabber, and grant the requested permissions for youtube.com.

Using the Extension

1. Navigate to a YouTube video and open the transcript (••• menu → Show transcript).
2. Click the YTTranscriptGrabber toolbar button.
3. Press Grab to pull the on-screen transcript and metadata (title, creator, link).
4. The textarea fills with Markdown: the header lists Creator: [[Name]], source URL, and capture time, followed by bullet-pointed transcript lines (- 00:00 …).
5. Use Copy, Download, or Show to export the Markdown.
   • On Safari, the download action falls back to a save dialog because the downloads API is not available. On Chromium browsers, it uses the standard downloads API.

Chrome / Chromium Testing (Optional)

1. Open chrome://extensions (or the equivalent in Edge/Brave).
2. Enable Developer mode.
3. Click Load unpacked and choose the YTTranscriptGrabber-chrome folder.
4. Pin the extension and test on any YouTube video with the transcript visible.

Development Notes

• The content script (content.js) searches for #segments-container and related transcript nodes and normalises whitespace for consistent output.
• The popup (popup.js) now feature-detects browser APIs to stay compatible with Safari’s WebExtension shims and formats Markdown with metadata.
• If you make changes to files under Shared (Extension)/Resources/, Xcode will package them automatically inside the Safari Web Extension target.
• Re-run initial.txt only if you need to regenerate everything from scratch; otherwise edit the files in-place.
• Custom icon art (art/icon-*.png) is generated via a small Python script so you can tweak colours/shapes and regenerate as needed.

Known Limitations

• You must open the transcript drawer for the scraper to detect segments.
• Safari currently warns that the downloads permission is unsupported. The extension handles this by providing a fallback download path, but Safari will still surface the warning during conversion/build.