How to download Apple Podcast transcripts
Open Apple Podcasts on your Mac and go to the episode you want. Click the three dots, then choose View Transcript. Your Mac saves a copy to your hard drive the moment you do that, and keeps it.
That's the easy part.
Getting the transcript back out is the hard part. macOS hides the folder those copies land in, and stores them in a goofy format so that you can't easily access them.
This little tool though? It can.
Click the "Choose my Podcasts folder" button above, navigate to the folder in the instructions and like magic every transcript you have opened turns into something you can read, search, copy into a doc, or download as a text file.
You have questions, I have answers.
What can I do with the transcript once I have it?
- Turn it into a blog post, a newsletter, five LinkedIn posts, and the exact language your buyers use.
- Search across your recorded episodes to find the one time you explained your process well and never wrote it down.
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Why did you create this tool?
I created this tool because I needed it! Podcast transcripts are a rich and underutilized source of content that you participated in creating. There's all kinds of ways to use these transcripts if you have them. But acquiring them is often a bottleneck.
Why do you have to pick the folder yourself?
No website can read your hard drive on its own. That's a browser rule with no exceptions, and it's a good one. So you point this page at the folder once, and from then on your shelf is saved in your own browser and opens instantly. Nothing is uploaded, there's no account, and no transcript ever reaches a server.
If you clear your cookies, you'll need to select the folder again.
What if I don't see "View Transcript" in the menu?
Occasionally a publisher will choose not to make their transcripts available. They can switch transcripts off for a whole show, or for one episode while the rest of the feed has them, which is why you'll sometimes see a single gap in a show you've been listening to for years. Either way, unfortunately, there's nothing that you can do about it other than emailing the host directly and requesting the transcript.
In my experience, most podcasts make their transcripts available. There have been very few I haven't been able to access this way.
What The Podcast Transcript Shelf doesn't do
It only works on a Mac with the desktop Podcasts app, because that's the only place these files exist. It doesn't create transcripts from audio, and it can't reach episodes you have never opened the transcript for.