Twitch VOD → Text · Local · Free
Transcribe a Twitch VOD to text — even the 6-hour ones
Transcribe a full Twitch VOD — even a six-hour stream — on your Mac. No length cap, no upload, no account. It runs locally at ~155× realtime, so hours of stream become a couple of minutes of compute.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/123456789 macOS 14.2+ · Apple Silicon · Free & open-source · no account
Why transcribe a Twitch VOD?
Twitch VODs are long — four, six, sometimes eight hours. That length is exactly why most transcription tools fall over on them, and exactly why a transcript is so useful: somewhere in those hours are the clippable moments, the quotes, and the answer to "when did I talk about that?"
- Streamers & editors — find highlight moments to cut into clips, then write titles and YouTube descriptions from the text.
- Clippers & community — search a whole stream for the bit everyone's quoting, with the timestamp to jump to it.
- Researchers — study streamer speech and community dynamics across long sessions without uploading gigabytes of video.
The wall everyone hits with web tools is length: a multi-hour VOD means uploading
gigabytes and waiting, if the free cap even allows it. MacParakeet transcribes the whole
VOD locally at ~155× realtime — a 6-hour stream is a couple of minutes of compute — and
the --output-dir flag lets you queue an entire
backlog in one walk-away run.
How to transcribe Twitch VODs on your Mac
Free, local, and no upload to a transcription cloud. The whole thing takes about a minute the first time, seconds after that.
- 1
Copy the VOD URL
Grab the saved broadcast or highlight link —
twitch.tv/videos/123456789. Public VODs work. Sub-only or expired VODs that require a login generally can't be downloaded. - 2
Paste it into MacParakeet — or queue several from the CLI
Paste one link in the Transcribe tab, or from the terminal pass a whole list with
--output-dirand walk away. The audio downloads and transcribes locally, no matter how long the stream is. - 3
Mine it for clips and quotes
Search the transcript for the exact moment, grab timestamps to cut clips, or feed it to an LLM for a highlight list, chapter markers, or a stream recap.
Prefer the terminal? One command does the download and the transcription:
$ macparakeet-cli transcribe "https://www.twitch.tv/videos/<id>" --output-dir vods
Install with brew install moona3k/tap/macparakeet-cli. Add more links and --output-dir to batch a whole list in one walk-away run. See the agent & CLI guide →
What "local" means here — honestly
To fetch a Twitch link, MacParakeet downloads the audio from the source over the network — that step needs an internet connection. Everything after that is on-device: the speech recognition runs on your Mac's Apple Neural Engine via the Parakeet model, at roughly 155× realtime with a ~2.5% word error rate on English. Your audio is never uploaded to a transcription server, there's no account, and there are no per-minute caps.
Transcribe content you own or have the right to use, and respect each platform's terms of service. MacParakeet is a tool for getting text out of media you're allowed to access — not for redistributing other people's videos.
Frequently asked
Can it really handle a 6-hour VOD?
Yes. There's no length cap because it runs on your Mac at roughly 155× realtime — a 6-hour stream transcribes in a couple of minutes of compute. Browser tools usually cap the free tier at a few minutes or time out on that much audio.
Can I batch a whole backlog of VODs?
Yes. From the CLI, pass several VOD URLs at once with --output-dir. It writes one transcript per VOD and keeps going if one fails — leave it running overnight.
Do the timestamps line up so I can cut clips?
Yes. Every line is timestamped, and you can export SRT. Search a phrase, read off the time, and jump to it in the VOD to clip it.
Will sub-only or expired VODs work?
Only what you can access. VODs that require a subscription or login, and VODs that have expired, generally can't be downloaded.
Get the transcript in a minute.
Free and open-source. Download MacParakeet, paste your Twitch link, and keep the text.
macOS 14.2+ · Apple Silicon · GPL-3.0