YouTube annotation converter

Save annotations by converting them to subtitles (.srt)

www.eric-kaiser.net • This tool on GitHub

This tool no longer works! YouTube removed all annotation data from videos on January 15, 2019.
If you still have XML files containing annotations, you can convert them in bulk using this program I threw together.

Video ID or URL:

When annotations overlap in time:


When an annotation contains a link:



What's this about?

On January 15, 2019, YouTube is getting rid of annotations.

Annotations are boxes of text and/or links that could be placed anywhere inside a video. Since May 2017 you can no longer add new annotations, and on January 15, 2019, even existing annotations will disappear. This is really unfortunate for older videos that make heavy use of them, providing commentary, background info, or corrections.

What does this tool do?

If you want to preserve your videos' annotations, you can use this tool to convert them into subtitles instead.

  1. Enter a video URL
  2. Click "Convert" and get an .srt file containing all the annotation text
  3. Upload the .srt file in YouTube Studio to add the text as subtitles

To check which of your videos have annotations, use AnnoFetch.

Isn't this a bad idea?

Almost certainly! I'm just waiting for someone to tell me why.

It's probably not the intended use for subtitles, but it seems better than nothing — at least you can keep the annotation text around in some form.

Credit is due

I wrote all the code myself, but the ideas aren't mine.