The only caption download format named in Loom's transcription and closed captions documentation is SRT. The HTML track element on your own web page wants WebVTT. So publishing a Loom's captions outside Loom is a two-step job: get the SRT out, then convert it — and both ends of that chain have official rules worth knowing before you start.
This page walks the whole route, and spends a fair amount of time on step one, because that is where most people get stopped.
Before you start
You need a role that is allowed to download captions. Loom states the permission plainly in its captions article: "Downloadable captions are only available to creators and admins on a Business/Business + AI plan, and members and admins on an Enterprise plan".
Note what that sentence does not gate. Reading the transcript is available much more broadly — the same page says "Transcripts are available on all Loom plans (50+ distinct languages are supported)." The download button is the restricted part, not the transcript itself.
There is a second gate above that one. On Enterprise and Premium (Business+AI) plans, and only for Atlassian-managed workspaces, an admin can switch downloads off for everyone. Loom's wording on what that switch covers is worth reading closely: "Once disabled, users in your workspace will no longer have the ability to download videos and transcripts." Transcripts go with the videos. If Download captions is missing and your role looks right, this is the setting to ask your admin about.
Step 1: download the SRT
Open the video, select the "..." menu above it, then Download captions. Loom's own instruction is: "To download, select the " ... " above your video and then Download captions". You get a .srt file on disk.
Two things can make that step come up empty.
No transcript exists yet. Loom lists the usual causes: "If your video has no transcript, this could be caused by a couple of different things such as the video length, a delayed processing time or the video was recorded before the transcript feature launched." Its suggested fix is a round trip — "we recommend downloading the video and re-uploading it."
The spoken language is not covered. Loom's eligibility page says to "Verify the spoken language is supported by Loom . Unsupported languages (for example, Hebrew) will fail to produce transcripts, disabling all AI functionality." Hebrew is Loom's own example.
Step 2: fix the wording before you export
Do the proofreading inside Loom, not in the SRT afterwards. Loom links the two directly: "Captions are based on your video's transcript, so correcting the transcript will automatically correct the captions."
The reason this ordering matters is the next section's punchline: once a corrected file leaves Loom, there is no documented way to put it back. Loom's page on regenerating transcripts is explicit — "Users can't upload external subtitle files to Loom." So the Loom-hosted copy and your exported copy diverge the moment you edit one of them.
One editing caveat from the same area of the docs: you "will only be able to edit individual words in your transcript, not the grammar", and Loom notes it does not currently support "corrections to words containing special characters or diacritics - ü, ß, ñ, á, ç, ô, è".
Step 3: understand why renaming the file fails
Changing .srt to .vtt is the first thing everyone tries, and it produces a file a browser will refuse. The two formats differ inside, not at the end of the filename.
The W3C WebVTT specification (Candidate Recommendation Draft, 20 May 2026) pins down three things a renamed SRT does not satisfy:
- The header. A WebVTT file begins with the string
WEBVTT. An SRT file begins with a cue number. - Encoding and MIME type. "A WebVTT file must consist of a WebVTT file body encoded as UTF-8 and labeled with the MIME type
text/vtt." That is two separate requirements, and the second one is about your server, not your file. - The timestamp separator. The spec calls for "A U+002E FULL STOP character (.)" before the three-digit milliseconds. SRT files use a comma there.
There is an asymmetry behind all of this that is worth internalising. WebVTT has a published specification you can quote line by line. SRT does not have one from a standards body — it is the de facto format of the SubRip tool, held together by implementations copying each other. That is why "it worked in VLC" tells you very little about whether a file will work in a browser.
Step 4: convert the SRT
Try it right here
Runs in your browser. Your file is not uploaded anywhere.
In this direction the conversion is small and lossless: prepend the WEBVTT header, change the timestamp commas to full stops, leave everything else alone. The cue numbers Loom wrote can stay — the spec treats a cue identifier as "Optionally, a WebVTT cue identifier followed by a WebVTT line terminator".
The converter above runs in your browser tab. The file is read from disk and handed back without being uploaded anywhere, which matters more for a transcript than for most media files — a caption file is a full text record of what was said in the meeting.
If you want the format comparison rather than the procedure, SRT vs VTT, compared covers what each format can and cannot carry. If you need the reverse trip for an editor that only takes SRT, VTT to SRT handles it — but note that direction is lossy, because SRT has no field for the cue settings (position, line, align) that a VTT timing line can carry.
Step 5: serve it the way the spec asks
Two checks after conversion:
- Open the file in a text editor. First line should read
WEBVTT. Timings should look like00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:04.000, with full stops. Commas mean the conversion did not happen. - Check the response header. The spec expects the file labeled with the MIME type
text/vtt. A server that sends it astext/plainis a real cause of a perfectly valid file producing no captions in atrackelement.
Common mistakes
- Expecting the downloaded MP4 to carry the captions. It does not. Loom is direct about this: "While all video trims will be retained in the mp4-downloaded format, it's important to note that other Loom features, including CTAs, Filler Word + Silence removal, Chapters, and Closed Captions, will not be included in the downloaded file." The separate caption download exists precisely because of this.
- Planning to upload the finished VTT back into Loom. "Users can't upload external subtitle files to Loom."
- Renaming the extension. No header, wrong separator. See step 3.
- Editing the SRT instead of the transcript. Fine if the export is the end of the line; a trap if anyone will keep watching the Loom-hosted copy.
- Planning a bulk export. Loom's API page says "Loom does not offer a open API at this time", and that the Loom SDK "is not an open API and does not provide the same functionalities as APIs". Caption export is a per-video, manual action.
FAQ
Can Loom export captions directly as VTT? The format named in Loom's captions documentation is SRT — "You can download an SRT file of your captions." Export the SRT and convert it with the tool above.
Why is "Download captions" missing from my video menu? Two documented reasons. Your role may not qualify: downloads are limited to "creators and admins on a Business/Business + AI plan, and members and admins on an Enterprise plan". Or an admin has disabled downloads workspace-wide, which removes the ability to download "videos and transcripts" for everyone in it.
Can I upload my corrected VTT back into Loom? No — Loom states that "Users can't upload external subtitle files to Loom." Correct the transcript inside Loom instead; captions follow the transcript automatically.
Can I get the captions in another language? Loom says "Loom currently does not support transcript translation. You can only generate transcripts in the language spoken in the video." Separately, on the playback side, Loom says "Viewers can translate captions into the language of their choice", with the caveat that those translations "are auto-generated by AI based on the video's transcript" and are unavailable if the creator's workspace does not allow AI. That viewer-side translation is not a file you can download.
Does the free plan let me download an SRT? Loom's captions page scopes downloadable captions to the Business, Business + AI and Enterprise roles listed above. Starter users can still view the transcript — check the current permissions in the official documentation, since plan naming has been changing.
Convert the file you just pulled out of Loom with SRT to VTT, or browse all Clapr tools — everything runs locally in your browser. More step-by-steps like this one live in how-to guides, and if your Loom stopped recording before you were done, see Loom's 5-minute recording limit.
Loom behaviour cited from its official help center articles on transcription and closed captions, downloading videos, regenerating transcripts, disabling downloads, and its open API FAQ, checked 16 September 2026. WebVTT requirements cited from the W3C WebVTT specification, Candidate Recommendation Draft dated 20 May 2026.
