Youtube Closed Captions

• Currently requires Python >= 3.12

pip install youtube-closed-captions

from ytcaptions import Download

video_id = 'jNQXAC9IVRw'
download = Download()
# Language is optional and default to "en"
# YouTube uses "en","fr" not "en-US", "fr-FR"
captions = download.get_captions(video_id, 'en')

The Python package is now ytcaptions to avoid a conflict with the unrelated ytcc package. Update from ytcc.download import Download to from ytcaptions import Download. DownloadException is also exported from ytcaptions. Imports from ytcaptions.download and ytcaptions.storage remain available. The old ytcc import is removed.

The PyPI distribution name is youtube-closed-captions, and Python 3.12 or newer is required.

Install the library and test dependencies from this directory:

pip install -e . -r requirements.txt

Note: Functional tests do download directly from Youtube

## All tests
pytest

## Or using unittest
python -m unittest discover

## Unit tests
python -m unittest discover test/unit

## Functional tests
python -m unittest discover test/functional

Build and validate the release files locally:

pip install build twine
pytest test/unit
python -m build
python -m twine check --strict dist/youtube_closed_captions-1.0.0-py3-none-any.whl dist/youtube_closed_captions-1.0.0.tar.gz

These commands do not upload or publish the package. Live YouTube tests require network access and are skipped in CI because YouTube blocks datacenter IPs.