Call Recorder
Get it — $15
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Record & transcribe YouTube videos on Mac

Capture audio from any YouTube video, live stream, or browser-based player on your Mac, and transcribe it locally for research, notes, or clipping. No yt-dlp, no sketchy website.

Get it — $15 lifetime or $12 / year

How it works with YouTube

  1. 1

    Open the YouTube video

    Any browser, any device-playing-through-your-Mac. Works on live streams and unlisted videos too.

  2. 2

    Press ⌘R in Call Recorder

    The app captures the browser tab's audio. Play the video through — recording matches real time.

  3. 3

    Drag-drop to transcribe

    Or click 'Transcribe Last Recording'. Get a .txt with the full transcript in a minute or two.

Why Call Recorder for YouTube

Call Recorder grabs whatever plays on your Mac — so any YouTube video, even ones with no captions or no transcript panel, becomes a searchable document on your laptop within minutes.

  • Works on videos with no auto-captions (music, foreign language, overlapping speech)
  • Captures live streams while they're live
  • Handles foreign-language videos — Whisper transcribes and can translate to English
  • No need for yt-dlp, browser extensions, or paid SaaS
  • Transcripts saved as .txt next to the .m4a — easy to grep, share, or pipe into an LLM
  • Use it for research, studying, journalism, or building clips

YouTube — Q&A

Isn't this just yt-dlp + whisper?+

Those work too — if you're comfortable in the terminal, know Python, and don't mind installing binaries. Call Recorder is one $15 app that does the whole thing with no setup, and handles things yt-dlp can't (live streams, DRM'd playback, private streams you're watching).

What about YouTube's own transcript?+

Great when it exists and is accurate. Often it's neither — music videos, foreign-language content, and videos with heavy accents frequently have no transcript or a poor one. Whisper large-v3-turbo beats it reliably.

Can I translate the transcript?+

Yes — Whisper has a built-in translate mode that outputs English regardless of source language. Drop the file onto Call Recorder and it auto-detects language.

Is this legal?+

Recording audio for personal use (study, notes) is generally fair use in most jurisdictions. Redistributing the audio or transcript may not be — check the video's license before sharing.

Ready to record youtube properly?

$15 lifetime, or $12/year. 30-day refund. Transcription included.

Get Call Recorder