SRT to text converter
An SRT file is mostly numbers and timestamps wrapped around the words. Pick one and download just the words, one line per caption or merged into readable paragraphs.
Get the words out of an SRT file
SRT to TXT, in your browser
Drop a file here or choose one. It stays on this device. Up to 500 MB.
Your browser does the conversion. Open your browser’s network tab while converting to check that the file is not uploaded.
The SRT never leaves your device. The text is pulled out inside this tab, so no account is needed and the file isn’t sent to Textspert.
What gets removed
- Cue numbers and the timing lines under them.
- Formatting tags for italics, bold and font color.
- Positioning codes some tools add in curly braces.
- Line breaks inside a caption, so a sentence split over two lines reads as one.
Every word a viewer would read on screen stays, in order, including speaker names the captioner typed in. Nothing gets reworded, corrected or summarized along the way.
Lines or paragraphs
Leave “Merge lines into paragraphs” off and you get one line per caption, handy for checking a translation or pasting into a spreadsheet. Switch it on and captions run together, with a new paragraph wherever speech pauses for 2 seconds or more. That reads far more like a document, and it’s the better pick for notes or a blog post. The 2-second gap is fixed, so there’s nothing to tune.
- 1 / 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,500 / Thanks for coming.
- 2 / 00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,000 / Let’s start with the budget.
- Thanks for coming. Let’s start with the budget.
What people use it for
Quotes and show notes
Lift a clean passage from your own video’s captions for a newsletter or an episode page.
Searching a long video
Plain text is easy to search for the moment someone mentioned a name or a number.
Proofreading captions
With the timestamps out of the way, spelling mistakes jump out.
Tidying the text afterward
Captions are written to be read in two-second bursts, so expect short fragments, sound labels like [music] or [laughter], and repeated words where a captioner kept up with fast speech. Search for square brackets to find the sound labels, and read it aloud once to catch the fragments.
Auto-generated captions often have no punctuation or capital letters. Paragraph mode helps, because a pause in speech usually marks the end of a thought.
Before you publish, check names and numbers against the video. Captions get written fast and fixed never, so a wrong surname or a misheard figure can sit in an SRT for years.
When you want more than plain text
Captions don’t record who said what, and yours may have come from an automatic captioner. If you have the recording, Textspert can transcribe it with labels for up to 4 speakers, then export DOCX, PDF or TXT with or without timestamps. See video to text or the YouTube transcript guide.
For a different subtitle format, try SRT to VTT.
Transcribe the recording behind the captions
Launching November 2026
SRT to text questions
Can I keep the timestamps?
This tool removes them. To keep timestamps beside the text, hold on to the SRT, or transcribe the recording in Textspert and export TXT with timestamps on.
What if my SRT has a broken cue?
The page lists it under the download with the cue number and line. Every other caption still comes out.
Does it work with VTT files?
Convert the VTT with VTT to SRT first, then bring the SRT here.
Is the text file plain UTF-8?
Yes. It opens in any text editor, Word or Google Docs.
Is anything uploaded?
No. Reading the SRT and writing the text both happen on your device.
Can I turn the text back into subtitles later?
Not from the text alone, since the timing is gone. Keep the original SRT next to it in case you need captions again.
Related tools
- Subtitle generatorMake SRT and VTT caption files from video or audio, with a caption length you set.
- SRT to VTTTurn SRT captions into WebVTT for web players.
- Video to textGet a transcript or SRT and VTT subtitles from MP4, MOV, MKV and other video files.
- ToolsEvery transcription tool on one page.
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