Facebook → Text · Local · Free
Transcribe a Facebook video to text — privately, on your Mac
Turn a public Facebook video or Reel into searchable, quotable text on your Mac. The audio downloads, then transcribes on-device — nothing is uploaded to a transcription service. Built for the way journalists and researchers actually work.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=… macOS 14.2+ · Apple Silicon · Free & open-source · no account
Why transcribe a Facebook video?
Public Facebook video — a press conference, a town hall, a local-news clip, a creator's Reel — is a primary source. The problem is that audio isn't quotable, citable, or searchable until it's text. Transcribing it turns a moment buried in a feed into something you can search, quote with a timestamp, and file away.
This page is aimed at the people who do that work:
- Journalists — capture an exact statement from a public video and cite the second it was said.
- Researchers & analysts — build a searchable corpus of public posts without sending them to a third party.
- Community & social teams — turn a Reel into captions, a blog recap, or an accessible transcript.
Privacy is the reason to do it locally. Many "Facebook to text" tools upload the clip to their own servers — not ideal for sensitive, breaking, or pre-publication material. MacParakeet keeps the audio and the transcript on your Mac, full stop.
How to transcribe Facebook 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 video URL
Use the post's menu (Copy link) or the address bar —
facebook.com/watch/?v=…, a/reel/…link, or anfb.watch/…short link. Public posts work; content inside a private group or behind a login may not download. - 2
Paste it into MacParakeet
Drop the link into the Transcribe tab and hit Transcribe. The audio downloads to your Mac and is transcribed locally — the clip never sits on a third-party tool's servers.
- 3
Quote, search, and archive
Export with timestamps so you can cite the exact moment a statement was made, and keep a local, searchable archive of the videos you're working from.
Prefer the terminal? One command does the download and the transcription:
$ macparakeet-cli transcribe "https://www.facebook.com/reel/<id>" --format json
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 a Facebook 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
Can I transcribe a private Facebook video or one in a private group?
Only content you can actually access. Private posts and group-restricted videos that require a login generally can't be downloaded. Stick to public posts you have the right to use.
Does the video get uploaded anywhere?
No. The audio downloads to your Mac and is transcribed on-device. Nothing is sent to a transcription service — which matters when you're working with sensitive or pre-publication material.
Does it work with Facebook Reels and Watch videos?
Yes — Reels, Watch videos, and fb.watch short links all work, along with anything else the bundled downloader can reach.
Is it accurate on phone-recorded Facebook video?
Parakeet is robust to compressed, low-bitrate audio, so most clips transcribe cleanly. Very noisy phone recordings will have more errors — review names, places, and numbers before you quote them.
Get the transcript in a minute.
Free and open-source. Download MacParakeet, paste your Facebook link, and keep the text.
macOS 14.2+ · Apple Silicon · GPL-3.0