How to get an Apple Podcasts transcript

Where to find it on iPhone/iPad

1. Play the episode

   Open the Podcasts app and start listening. Apple’s steps are in View episode transcripts on iPhone and iPad.

2. Open the full-screen player

   Tap the mini player at the bottom of the screen to expand the player.

3. Tap Transcript

   Tap the Transcript button. If it is grayed out, Apple says a transcript is not available for that episode. In transcript view you can follow along, search, and tap and hold a section to select or share text.

On Mac

1. Open the Podcasts app on your Mac (see Apple’s Read episode transcripts on Mac).
2. While an episode is playing, click the transcript control in the player.
3. Or select an episode, scroll to the Transcript section, and choose View Transcript.
4. You can search the text and click a paragraph to jump playback to that point.

Apple notes that transcript availability may vary by language and by country or region.

Why some episodes have none

• Language and OS — Apple Podcasts for Creators lists automatic transcripts for shows in English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish, with iOS 17.4 or later (Transcripts on Apple Podcasts).
• Region — Apple Support says listener transcripts are not available in Belarus and Russia.
• Not in the Apple catalog — Private RSS feeds are not processed in Apple Podcasts Connect, so those episodes do not show transcripts in the app.
• Creator settings / quality — Publishers can change transcript settings per show or episode; Apple may withhold transcripts that fail quality checks; episodes over 10 hours may not be transcribed; explicit episodes can be hidden when content restrictions are on.
• New episode delay — Apple generates transcripts after publish; Creators docs suggest waiting at least 24 hours before troubleshooting a missing one.

Can you copy or download it?

On iPhone and iPad you can tap and hold a transcript section to select or share text (Apple Support). That is an in-app reading aid — Apple’s listener help does not describe exporting the whole episode as a file.

Apple Support’s Mac guide Share podcasts on Mac says that when you share from a transcript you select up to 200 words, then Control-click and choose “Share from [timestamp]”. Apple Podcasts for Creators documents the same limit for sharing a transcript (“select and copy up to 200 words”, with attribution linking back to the episode) on Transcripts on Apple Podcasts. Neither page describes a full-episode .txt or .srt export for listeners.

Show owners can download and edit transcripts in Apple Podcasts Connect for their own episodes. That path is for publishers, not for listeners who need a full export of someone else’s show.

Get the whole episode as .txt/.srt

1. Copy the Apple Podcasts link

   In Apple Podcasts, open the episode or show, tap Share, then Copy Link (a podcasts.apple.com URL).

2. Paste it into Podskrift

   Use the Apple Podcasts transcript page. Podskrift reads the show’s public feed and lists the episode.

3. Download .txt or .srt

   You get a transcript you can copy and download — including for episodes where Apple’s Transcript button is grayed out, as long as the audio is in the public feed. Subscriber-only Apple Podcasts Subscriptions episodes are not available this way.

Check the RSS feed for a publisher transcript

Many hosts publish a transcript file on the episode’s RSS item with the Podcasting 2.0 podcast:transcript tag (URL + MIME type; optional language). See the podcast:transcript documentation on podcasting2.org.

Open the show’s feed (or the host’s site) and look for that tag, or a “Transcript” link in show notes. If a publisher file exists, that is often the cleanest full-text copy. If you only have the feed URL, you can still transcribe the audio via RSS to text or find the feed with how to find an RSS feed.

Apple in-app vs RSS vs Podskrift

FAQ