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PodcastTranscriptSearcher

Transcript search for podcast back catalogues

Find the exact moment someone said it

Paste a podcast’s RSS feed and search the words spoken across its episodes. Every match comes back with the episode, a tape-counter timestamp, a jump link into the audio and a citation you can paste straight into your notes.

No account needed. The feed is read once, in your browser session.

Or try:

How it works

  1. 01

    Paste the feed

    Any public podcast RSS URL. The feed is read on the server and the episode list — titles, dates, durations — comes straight back.

  2. 02

    Index the episodes

    The 5 most recent episodes are indexed for free. Each one is pulled apart into timestamped lines and held in your browser.

  3. 03

    Search the words

    Type a phrase and every matching line lifts on the episode track, with its timestamp, a jump link into the audio and a copyable citation.

Live example search

Try it on a sample

3 episodes · 39 lines

Sample: Studio Notes is a short synthetic transcript written for this demo — not a real podcast. Paste your own feed above to search a real back catalogue.

Try:

3 marked positions on the episode track.

  • 00:18Editing on tape taught me to
  • 11:30Editing on tape taught me to
  • 04:52Why your back catalogue is i
  • 01:36Editing on tape taught me to

4 matches

  • 00:18Editing on tape taught me to stop fixing everything

    On tape you marked the edit with a wax pencil, cut it with a razor, and joined it with splicing tape. You got one attempt, so you thought before you cut.

  • 11:30Editing on tape taught me to stop fixing everything

    Tape made you commit. The counter made you take notes. Everything modern is faster and neither habit survived, which is a shame.

  • 04:52Why your back catalogue is invisible

    Ninety seconds into episode forty-one there is a line about tape that people still email me about. Without a transcript nobody would ever find it again.

  • 01:36Editing on tape taught me to stop fixing everything

    That is really the whole reason transcript search exists. Finding the moment used to be the expensive part, and it was expensive because the tape could not be read.

What this actually searches

This version searches text a podcast already publishes in its feed. It does not run speech-to-text on audio, so a show that publishes nothing but a title cannot be searched word-for-word.

For each episode it takes the best source available, in this order, and labels every result with the one it used:

  • A published transcript. The podcast:transcript tag, in WebVTT, SubRip, JSON or plain text. This is the full experience: every spoken line, timestamped and jumpable.
  • A chapter list. The podcast:chapters file, or a timestamped chapter list written into the show notes. Timestamped, but only as detailed as the chapters are.
  • Show notes. Searchable prose, with no timestamps to jump to.

Most podcast hosts can switch transcripts on in one setting, and once they appear in the feed this app picks them up on the next load.

What it costs

Indexing the 5 most recent episodes of any feed is free and needs no account. There is no sign-up in this version and nothing is stored on a server — an indexed feed lives in your browser tab and is gone when you close it.

A paid tier for whole back catalogues is being set up. Its checkout runs in Stripe test mode today, so nothing can be charged.

See the plansFeeds you have opened