During early embryogenesis, embryos undergo a massive degradation of maternally inherited mRNAs and produce new zygotic transcripts. This maternal-to-zygotic transition requires a tight interplay of mRNA transcription and degradation, but distinguishing their unique contributions remains a challenge. Here, we dissect gene regulation during the zebrafish maternal-to-zygotic transition by combining single-cell RNA-sequencing with RNA metabolic labeling and nucleotide conversion within zebrafish embryos. We decompose single-cell transcriptomes into their new (zygotic) and old (maternal) mRNA components, and elicit critical information on gene regulation as it unfolds over both time and space. We show that most cell-type restricted expression arises by zygotic transcription, but distinguish a specific role for maternal transcripts in defining germ-cell and enveloping-layer identity, two earliest specified cell identities. We recover the underlying replacement between maternal and zygotic copies of embryonic genes with a relatively constant overall mRNA level, and associate a fast replacement with genes that has a restricted zygotic expression in either cell-type or time. Our study provides a valuable resource to investigate maternal and zygotic transcriptomes and reveals post-transcriptional events that control gene regulation during early embryogenesis. Overall design: SLAM-seq, zebrafish embryos, 1hpf and 6hpf, 2 technical replicates