LiteYT

Overview

LiteYT extracts transcripts from YouTube videos without recording or downloading audio. Paste a video URL and get the full caption text in seconds. Optionally pass the transcript through a local or remote LLM to generate a summary. It runs as a standalone Electron app with no Python backend required.

Features

• Dual-engine transcript extraction with automatic fallback — if one extraction method fails, the second takes over seamlessly
• Extract transcripts from any YouTube video that has captions available
• Multiple output formats: plain text, timestamped text, SRT
• 200-video batch processing — process large playlists or custom video lists at scale
• Channel scraping hub — point at a YouTube channel and pull every available transcript
• Analytics dashboard with 7+ chart types including word frequency, sentiment analysis, topic clustering, and timeline visualizations
• Optional LLM summarization of the extracted transcript

Installation

LiteYT is installed via the LiteAISuite installer. Select LiteYT during the install step. No Python or additional runtime is required — the app ships as a self-contained Electron binary.

Usage

Single video

1. Launch LiteYT from the LiteAISuite launcher or your desktop shortcut.
2. Paste a YouTube video URL into the input field.
3. Select your preferred output format (Plain Text, Timestamped, or SRT).
4. Click Extract. The transcript appears in the viewer panel.
5. Copy to clipboard or save to a file using the toolbar buttons.

Summarization

1. After extracting a transcript, click Summarize.
2. Select the LLM provider and model to use (configured in Settings).
3. The summary appears in the panel below the raw transcript.

Playlist / batch

1. Paste a YouTube playlist URL instead of a single video URL.
2. The app lists all videos in the playlist. Select which to include.
3. Click Extract All. Each transcript is saved as a separate file in the output directory.

Configuration

Settings are accessible from the gear icon in the toolbar.

| Setting | Description | |---|---| | Default Output Format | Plain Text, Timestamped, or SRT | | Output Directory | Where saved transcript files are written | | LLM Provider | API provider used for summarization (OpenAI, Anthropic, local) | | LLM Model | Specific model to use for summarization | | API Key | API key for the selected LLM provider | | Summary Prompt | Custom prompt used when summarizing |

Requirements

• Active internet connection (transcripts are fetched from YouTube's caption API)
• YouTube videos must have captions enabled (auto-generated or manual)
• An LLM API key is required only if using the summarization feature

Troubleshooting

"No transcript available" for a video The video does not have captions enabled. This is common for older videos, live streams, or videos where the uploader has disabled captions. There is no workaround — LiteYT does not perform speech-to-text transcription.

Transcript text is garbled or in the wrong language YouTube may have multiple caption tracks. If available, a language selector will appear after extraction. Select the correct track and re-extract.

Summarization returns an error Verify your API key is correct in Settings and that you have available quota with the selected provider. For local LLM usage, ensure the local server (e.g., LMStudio or Ollama) is running and the endpoint URL is correctly configured.