X / Twitter → Text · Local · Free
Transcribe an X (Twitter) video or Space — on your Mac
Turn an X (Twitter) video or a Space recording into text on your Mac. Most video posts have no captions at all, so transcribing the audio is the reliable way to get quotable text — locally, with nothing uploaded.
https://x.com/user/status/123… macOS 14.2+ · Apple Silicon · Free & open-source · no account
Why transcribe an X video or Space?
On X, the important thing is often said out loud — in a video clip or a Space — and never written down. Video tweets rarely carry captions, and Spaces can run for hours. If your job is to quote it accurately, you need the audio as text, fast, and sometimes before the post changes.
- Journalists — capture the exact wording of a statement in a video post and cite the timestamp.
- Analysts & researchers — turn long Spaces into searchable transcripts you can scan and reference.
- Anyone archiving — keep a local record of a clip in case it's edited or deleted.
Doing it locally matters when the sourcing is sensitive or pre-publication: the audio downloads to your Mac and is transcribed on-device, so the clip never lands on a third-party tool's servers. Transcribe only public content you have the right to use.
How to transcribe X (Twitter) videos 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 post or Space link
For a video tweet, copy the post URL —
x.com/<user>/status/<id>(twitter.comlinks work too). For a Space, use its link if it has a downloadable recording. - 2
Paste it into MacParakeet
Drop the link into the Transcribe tab. The audio downloads and transcribes locally — long Spaces are fine, there's no length cap.
- 3
Quote and cite
Timestamps let you cite the exact second something was said. Export and keep a local copy in case the post is later edited or deleted.
Prefer the terminal? One command does the download and the transcription:
$ macparakeet-cli transcribe "https://x.com/<user>/status/<id>" --format text
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 an X (Twitter) 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
Do X video posts have captions I can just copy?
Usually not — most video tweets have no caption track, which is why transcribing the audio is the reliable way to get text. MacParakeet generates it locally from the audio.
Can I transcribe a Twitter/X Space?
If the Space recording is downloadable, yes — and there's no length cap, so multi-hour Spaces are fine. A live Space that was never recorded can't be captured after the fact.
Will protected or deleted posts work?
Only content you can access. Protected accounts, deleted posts, and anything that requires a login generally can't be downloaded.
Is twitter.com still supported, or only x.com?
Both work. x.com and twitter.com links point to the same content, and the bundled downloader handles either.
Get the transcript in a minute.
Free and open-source. Download MacParakeet, paste your X (Twitter) link, and keep the text.
macOS 14.2+ · Apple Silicon · GPL-3.0