Free Online SRT Viewer

Free online SRT viewer that opens .srt and .vtt subtitle files right in the browser and shows every line with its timing, ready to search or to export.

Drop an .srt or .vtt here or click to choose

Reading…

#	Start → End	Length	Subtitle text

Get the transcript from YouTube itself

YouTube Video to Text Converter is a free Chrome extension: open any video and it pulls the transcript right on the page - as clean text or as subtitles.

Transcript of any YouTube video in one click
Clean text without timecodes - or .srt with them
Copy to clipboard or save as a file
Works with subtitles in other languages

YouTube Video to Text Converter
Free Chrome extension

Install from Google Chrome Web Store

Get YouTube Video to Text Converter

Free Chrome extension - no account, no upload.

How to open an SRT file in four steps

Open an SRT file in the viewer
Drag a .srt or .vtt file onto the drop area above, or click it and pick the file from disk. A track of several thousand cues appears as fast as a short one, and you can open the next file straight after it.
Read the subtitles as a table
Every block becomes one row, with the start and the end time in their own columns next to the spoken line. Each row also shows how long the cue stays on screen, which is the quickest way to spot a caption that flashes for half a second.
Find the line you need
Type a word or a phrase into the search box. Matches are highlighted in place, and the timecode next to the row tells you where to jump in the video.
Export the plain text
Click the export button to save a .txt file that keeps the dialogue and drops the block numbers and the timecodes. Handy when you want the transcript in a document, or want to feed it to an LLM for a summary.

What is an SRT file, and why read it in a browser?

SRT stands for SubRip Subtitle. It is a plain text file that holds the subtitle lines and the exact moment each one appears, and it lives next to the video instead of inside it. That is why you can swap it, translate it or switch it off without touching the video. The catch is that a raw SRT file is written for players, not for people. A two hour film runs to well over a thousand blocks of numbers and timecodes, and scrolling through that in a text editor to find one sentence is slow work.

Open an SRT file without installing anything

The viewer runs inside this page, which buys you four things.

Your subtitles stay on your computer, nothing is sent to a server.
Works in any modern browser, whether you sit at Windows or at a Mac.
Reads both .srt and .vtt without converting them first.
No account, no install, no limit on how many files you open.

Add to Chrome

The SRT file structure, block by block

Every SRT file is a stack of identical blocks, so once you have read one block you know the whole SRT file structure. A block opens with its number. Then comes the timing line, then one or two lines of dialogue, and an empty line closes the block. In the timing line the start and the end of the cue stand on the same row, separated by an arrow, and the milliseconds come after a comma. Here is a short SRT file example, and those few lines say it better than a page of prose.

1
00:01:23,456 --> 00:01:26,000
The first caption goes here.
It may run to a second line.

2
00:01:26,500 --> 00:01:29,000
The next block starts after one blank line.

Read it from the top. The 1 is the block number, the line under it is the timing, the sentences below that are what a viewer puts on screen, and the empty line marks where block 2 begins. WebVTT files (.vtt) are built the same way, only they open with the word WEBVTT and put the milliseconds after a dot. This page reads both, and to turn an SRT into a VTT you need a converter rather than a viewer.

How to make an SRT file by hand

People ask how to make an SRT file, and the honest answer is that Notepad or TextEdit is enough, with no subtitle editor involved. SRT file formatting comes down to four rules. Write every timecode exactly in the shape of 00:01:23,456, number the blocks in ascending order, leave one empty line between them, and save the result as UTF-8 with the extension .srt.

The format itself allows overlapping cues. Players handle them badly, so editors keep cues apart out of habit. Treat that as a strong recommendation, since the spec never demands it. Typing out a whole film by hand is another matter. For that our desktop transcriber for Windows makes the draft transcript in batches, and you correct only the timings.

What can open an SRT file on Windows and Mac

How to open an SRT file depends on what you want from it. Because the format is plain text, any text editor will open it. Notepad and WordPad handle it on Windows. On a Mac, TextEdit does. Your usual code editor works too. Want the captions over the picture instead? Then it is a player's job, and both VLC and Media Player Classic load a subtitle track with no setup at all. The viewer on this page covers the third case, when you only need to read or search the text and do not want to start anything.

Search with highlighting and clean text export

The search box scans the dialogue and highlights every hit, so finding the moment somebody says a product name takes a second instead of a scroll through the whole track. The duration column next to each cue makes short or overlong captions obvious. The export button hands you the speech as TXT, and if you strip subtitle files regularly, our SRT to TXT converter is built for that job.

Who opens SRT files

Translators and subtitlers

A translator reads the client's track before quoting the job. The table answers the two questions that decide the price, how many blocks there are and whether the lines are already split for two-line display.

Video editors and content creators

An editor needs one quote from an old episode, or wants to check a caption before it goes out. If the source is a YouTube video and no subtitle file is at hand, our YouTube transcript extension for Chrome pulls the text out of the page for free.

Students and researchers

Lecture and interview recordings usually come with a subtitle track. A student can search that track for a term and export the plain text into notes, instead of watching a two hour recording twice.

🙋 Frequently Asked Questions

❓ What is an SRT file?

An SRT file is a plain text file with timed subtitle blocks, saved with the .srt extension. Each block carries a number, a timing line, and the caption itself. Nothing inside it is binary or encrypted, which is why any text editor opens it, and so does a video player, and so does the viewer at the top of this page. Further down the page there is an SRT file example you can copy.

❓ What is an SRT file used for?

It tells the player which text to display and at what second. Keeping the subtitles in a separate file rather than burning them into the picture means one video can carry several language tracks and viewers can turn the captions off. A translator can rewrite the text without re-encoding a single frame. The same file is often reused as a transcript for search engines and for accessibility.

❓ What program can open an SRT file?

On Windows the raw file opens in Notepad, in WordPad or in any code editor, while VLC and Media Player Classic show it over the video. A Mac does the same with TextEdit and the same two players. On a phone or a Chromebook this page works, since the viewer needs nothing but a browser. If the text shows up as question marks or strange symbols, the file was saved in one encoding and is being read in another. SRT file formatting says nothing about encoding, so pick UTF-8 when you open it and the symbols usually come right.

❓ How to open an SRT file in VLC?

The easiest way is to put the .srt next to the video and give both the same name. VLC then loads the subtitles as soon as playback starts. For a file with a different name, start the video and drag the .srt onto the VLC window, or use the Subtitle menu and Add Subtitle File. If the captions appear but the characters are broken, set the subtitle encoding in the Tools menu under Preferences, on the Subtitles and On Screen Display page.

❓ How do I put an SRT file into an MP4?

This viewer will not do it. Reading subtitles in a browser tab and writing them into a video file are different jobs, and the second one belongs to a video editor or a converter. There are two routes. You can add the subtitles as a separate track inside the MP4 container, which keeps them switchable and leaves the result up to the player. You can also burn them into the picture, which works everywhere and cannot be turned off later. Both need software that re-writes the video, such as our set of video tools. Quite often neither is necessary, since a desktop player is happy with the two files sitting side by side.

❓ Can you convert an SRT file to PDF?

There is no PDF button here, though the detour is short. Export the dialogue as TXT from the viewer above. Then open that TXT in a word processor or in a browser and print it to PDF. You get a clean transcript without the block numbers and the timecodes, which is usually the point of a subtitle PDF.