What is a YouTube URL? Every link format, and where the video ID hides

A YouTube URL is the web address of one thing on YouTube: a video, a Short, a playlist, or a channel. The address carries an identifier that tells YouTube exactly which thing, plus a few extras like where to start playing. Once you can read the address, you can tell what any link points to, pull the video ID out of it, and know which links a transcript tool can use.

How to find a video's URL

On a computer. Open the video. The address bar has the link. Or click Share under the video and copy the link YouTube offers, which is the short form.

On a phone. Open the video in the YouTube app, tap Share, then Copy link.

Either form works everywhere on this site. Paste it into the box on the front page and the video ID is read out of it automatically.

The parts of a YouTube link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&t=43s&list=PLxxxx
        |-- domain ---|  |path|  |------- extras --------|

• Domain: youtube.com, m.youtube.com on phones, music.youtube.com, or the short domain youtu.be.
• Path: what kind of thing it is. /watch is a video, /shorts/ a Short, /playlist a playlist, /@name a channel.
• Extras after the question mark: v= is the video ID, list= a playlist ID, t= a start time. si= and feature= are tracking crumbs that can be ignored.

Every common format

What it is	What it looks like	Where the ID is
Ordinary video	youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ	after v=
Short share link	youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ	the part after the slash
Short	youtube.com/shorts/dQw4w9WgXcQ	after /shorts/
Embedded player	youtube.com/embed/dQw4w9WgXcQ	after /embed/
Mobile	m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ	after v=
YouTube Music	music.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ	after v=
Playlist	youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxxxx	after list=
Video inside a playlist	youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&list=PLxxxx	both
Channel by handle	youtube.com/@YouTubeCreators	the handle
Channel by ID	youtube.com/channel/UCxxxx	after /channel/

The first six all point at the same kind of thing, a single video, and they all contain the same 11-character video ID. youtu.be links are not a different service, they are YouTube's own short form.

The video ID

Every YouTube video has an ID of exactly 11 characters, letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores, like dQw4w9WgXcQ. It is the only part of the link that matters for identifying the video. Everything else is where to watch it from or how you got there.

That is why a transcript tool can take any of the formats above: it finds the ID and ignores the rest. It also means a link that has lost its ID, such as youtube.com/watch on its own, or youtu.be/ with nothing after it, cannot point at anything and will be rejected.

What the extras do

• t=43s or t=90: start playback at that point. It does not change which video, and a transcript covers the whole video regardless.
• list=: the playlist this video was opened from. A playlist is a collection, not a video, so it does not have a transcript of its own. Each video in it does.
• si= and feature=: added by the Share button and by apps to note where the link came from. Harmless, ignorable.

Links that will not work

• A link from a site that only looks like YouTube.
• A video link with no ID.
• Random text pasted instead of a link.
• A link with the closing bracket or full stop from a sentence stuck to the end. Trim it.
• A private, deleted, or region-blocked video. The link is fine, the video is not reachable.

Getting the transcript from any of them

Paste a watch link, a youtu.be link, a Short, an embed address, or a mobile link into the box on the front page. The video ID is read out, the captions are fetched, and when a video has no captions the audio is transcribed instead. You get clean text with timestamps and subtitle downloads, no account needed.

A playlist or channel link is a list of videos rather than one video, so paste the individual video links from it.