How to Use YouTube Transcript MCP with Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP), allowing you to enhance Claude's capabilities with custom tools. Connecting the YouTube Transcript MCP server lets you ask Claude to read and analyze any video directly inside your chat.

No more copy-pasting text from third-party sites—Claude handles the fetching automatically.

Configuration Guide for Claude Desktop

1. Open your Claude Desktop configuration file located at:
   • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
   • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
2. Add the YouTube Transcript server details inside the mcpServers object:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "youtube-transcript": {
         "command": "node",
         "args": ["/absolute/path/to/youtube-transcript-mcp/build/index.js"]
       }
     }
   }
   

3. Restart Claude Desktop. You will see the new tools icon indicating the server is running.

Chatting with Videos

You can now use natural language prompts like: "Provide a summary of the arguments in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=example" and Claude will fetch the transcript and compile the answer.

Transcribe Video Transcripts →