YoutubeTranscript

I tried to find a library that fetches YouTube video transcripts for Swift but couldn’t find one, so I made one myself.

This package uses an unofficial YouTube API, so it may break over time if no updates are made. The library uses an HTML scraper and the Innertube API to fetch transcripts.

Heavily inspired by youtube-transcript

Table of Contents

• Features
• Usage
  • Example
  • Fetching in a Specific Language
  • Supported URL Formats
  • Error Handling
• Minimum requirements
• Installation
  • Adding YoutubeTranscript to a Swift package
  • Adding YoutubeTranscript to an Xcode project
• Testing
• License

Features

• Fetches transcripts for YouTube videos and Shorts
• Supports language selection
• Handles all major YouTube transcript error cases
• Async/await API for modern Swift concurrency
• Comprehensive unit tests using Swift Testing

Usage

Library using one simple function to fetch transcript

fetchTranscript(for videoId: String,config: TranscriptConfig = .init()) async throws -> [TranscriptResponse]

Example

import YoutubeTranscript

Task {
    do {
        let transcript = try await YoutubeTranscript.fetchTranscript(for: "YOUR_VIDEO_ID")
        for entry in transcript {
            print("\(entry.offset)s: \(entry.text)")
        }
    } catch {
        print("Failed to fetch transcript: \(error)")
    }
}

Fetching in a Specific Language

let config = TranscriptConfig(lang: "en")
let transcript = try await YoutubeTranscript.fetchTranscript(for: "YOUR_VIDEO_ID", config: config)

Supported URL Formats

• Standard videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
• Short URLs: https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID
• YouTube Shorts: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID
• Embedded videos: https://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID
• Direct video IDs: VIDEO_ID

Error Handling

The library throws YoutubeTranscriptError for all error cases:

• .tooManyRequests: YouTube is rate-limiting your IP
• .videoUnavailable: The video is not available
• .disabled: Transcripts are disabled for this video
• .notAvailable: No transcripts are available
• .notAvailableLanguage: No transcript in the requested language
• .emptyTranscript: The transcript is empty
• .invalidVideoId: The video ID is invalid
• .networkError: Network error occurred
• .parsingError: Failed to parse YouTube response

Minimum requirements

• macOS 12.0+
• iOS 15.0+
• tvOS 15.0+
• watchOS 8.0+

Installation

Adding YoutubeTranscript to a Swift package

Add this package to your Package.swift dependencies:

.package(url: "https://github.com/spaceman1412/swift-youtube-transcript.git", from: "1.0.0")

And add YoutubeTranscript as a dependency for your target:

.target(
    name: "<target>",
    dependencies: [
        .product(name: "YoutubeTranscript", package: "swift-youtube-transcript")
    ]
)

Adding YoutubeTranscript to an Xcode project

1. From the File menu, select Add Packages…
2. Enter https://github.com/spaceman1412/swift-youtube-transcript into the Search or Enter Package URL search field
3. Link YoutubeTranscript to your application target

Testing

This project uses Swift Testing for its test suite.

To run the tests:

swift test

The tests cover all major success and error cases for fetchTranscript. You can provide your own video IDs in Tests/YoutubeTranscriptTests.swift to verify real-world scenarios.

License

MIT