Note by Apollia on Nov. 8, 2023: Please join my Patreon if you'd like to support me and my work!

My main personal website is now Apollia.org. I'm still not sure what to do with Astroblahhh.Com, so it's mostly staying as-is for now.





How To Mostly Remove YouTube Interactive Transcripts
from Videos You Uploaded

Written and posted 8/9/2012.

Sorry if these instructions ever cease to work in the future,
such as because of changes to YouTube.


Here's how to mostly get rid of YouTube interactive transcripts, like the computer-made "machine transcript" which YouTube might automatically add to videos you upload.

I say "mostly" because unfortunately, I don't know of a way to delete the machine transcript completely instead of just disabling it.

Also, these instructions won't get rid of the interactive transcript button on your video's page. But they should at least prevent the interactive transcript from being displayed after clicking the interactive transcript button.


  1. Log into your YouTube account.




  2. Click your user name in the upper right corner, then click Video Manager in the list of links that will appear below your user name.




  3. In the Uploads list in the Video Manager page, find the video whose interactive transcript you want to get rid of.

    Then, click the down-pointing triangle next to that video's Edit button, and click the Captions menu item.




  4. On the Captions page, if your page has an enabled interactive transcript, there will be a list to the right of your video which will look something like this:

    Click the X next to any transcripts which have X's to remove them.




  5. Then, click the item which says "Machine transcript". The transcript will appear.

    My first video's incredibly bad computer-made transcript.
    (I blacked out some words some people might find offensive.)

    The transcript was no doubt worsened by the fact that the
    computer assumed I was speaking English
    when I was actually speaking French.

    Click the Disable button, then click the Done button.




  6. If an error didn't appear, you can skip this step. But, if you get the following error after clicking the Done button...

    Captions with Language 'English' and Name '' already exist. To edit the captions, please delete this track and add it again.

    ...click the Cancel button, click X next to any transcripts other than the one which says "Machine transcript" next to it, and repeat step 5.




  7. If you successfully disabled all transcripts, the transcript list should look like this, with "Machine transcript" displayed under "Disabled tracks".

    (Sorry, I don't know of a way to delete the machine transcript completely instead of just disabling it.)




Once you go to your video, you'll find the interactive transcript button is still there, but when you click the button, it should say "There is no Interactive Transcript."


Last modified: August 9, 2012
This page uploaded to web: August 9, 2012





Note by Apollia on Nov. 8, 2023: Please join my Patreon if you'd like to support me and my work!

My main personal website is now Apollia.org. I'm still not sure what to do with Astroblahhh.Com, so it's mostly staying as-is for now.