From lecture to notes in 3 steps
The exact workflow that makes studying 10x faster.
Grab the transcript
Paste the YouTube link into ClawGrab and hit GRAB. A TED talk returns ~2,000–3,000 words; a 45-minute lecture considerably more.
Make it searchable
Search the text for the exact concept in your slides. Ctrl-F beats rewind — every time.
Turn it into study material
Copy key quotes for citations, paste the transcript into an AI tool for summaries and flashcards, or export SRT for your notes app.
Why students swear by text
Watching a video twice to get the key points costs you the same 45 minutes plus a rewind. Reading a transcript takes a fraction of the time — and lets you scan straight to what you need. The text is the publisher's own captions, verbatim, so what you quote is what was actually said.
TED talks run 2,000–3,000 words of spoken text. Live-streamed lectures we've pulled have hit 12,000 words. That's a semester's worth of material you can manage as plain text — grab from YouTube, Vimeo, podcasts and more, including university channels that stream lectures on YouTube LIVE.
A real grab, not a screenshot
Live transcript pulled from vimeo.com/76979871 — 124 words, English captions, no account, a few seconds.
Study hacks with transcripts
Four ways students use ClawGrab every week.
Flashcards from lectures
Paste the transcript into your AI tool: "Make 20 exam-style flashcards from this."
Searchable notes
Stop scrubbing timelines. Searching text is instant and doesn't skip a single point.
Perfect citations
Verbatim quotes for essays and presentations — the text matches what was actually said.
Accessibility
Read instead of watch when a video is hard to follow, or when you're on a bumpy bus.
FAQ
The honest answers.
Can I get a transcript of a lecture with no captions?
If the lecture has captions, you get them verbatim. Without captions we fall back to speech-to-text — good on clean studio audio, imperfect on muffled classroom recordings. We tell you when accuracy suffers rather than pretending.
Is it okay to use transcripts for my notes?
Yes. Notes, quotes, summaries and studying from a transcript are standard fair use. Don't republish a whole lecture as your own work — that's plagiarism, not note-taking.
Does it work on TED talks?
Yes — TED talks on YouTube are caption-bearing, so you get the official captions verbatim. A typical 18-minute talk runs 2,000–3,000 words.
How much does it cost?
Free during the beta (fair-use daily limit) — no card, no account needed to start, summarization and study-question generation included. Nothing is for sale right now.
Can I use it on my phone?
Yes. It's a pure web app — phone, tablet, laptop, anything with a browser. YouTube's own transcript button is desktop-only, which is one of the reasons students switch.