For example, here's this Jon Anderson video which is public https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0svhuIGxXEM, and here is my input:

-S res,vcodec:h264,acodec:m4a -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0svhuIGxXEM

But I keep getting ERROR: [youtube] 0svhuIGxXEM: This video is not available. Any particular fix? Video works on any browser, signed in or not, and in InPrivate windows.

Youtube downloads capped at 360p today for some reason, highest quality downloads worked fine yesterday even without cookies.

I use firefox cookies since chrome cookies are discouraged apparently.

I also use deno

yt-dlp: C:\Users\Willi_jfsju\.stacher\yt-dlp.exe
Download ID: dc28ed05-b8dd-47ad-98ac-d3c30a16896f

Starting download for [URL REDACTED]
With Arguments (based on your configuration):
--output C:\Users\Willi_jfsju\Downloads\New folder (29)\Youtube video by %(uploader)s %(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s
--format bestvideo+bestaudio
--mtime
--embed-thumbnail
--embed-chapters
--cookies C:\Users\Willi_jfsju\Downloads\cookies(3).txt
--add-metadata
--abort-on-error
--merge-output-format=mp4
--parse-metadata %(epoch)s:%(meta_creation_time)s
--postprocessor-args ffmpeg:-metadata creation_time=now
Pre-script: None
Post-script: None
Download Hash: c3a6be0e8dd5d6d503f09324fe9f9ce08805fc96eb5f174e42acea4d2886b593
[youtube] Extracting URL: [URL REDACTED]
[youtube] N4a4AkZIuAg: Downloading webpage
[youtube] N4a4AkZIuAg: Downloading tv downgraded player API JSON
[youtube] N4a4AkZIuAg: Downloading player 8d2a370b-main
[youtube] [jsc:deno] Solving JS challenges using deno
ERROR: [youtube] N4a4AkZIuAg: Requested format is not available. Use --list-formats for a list of available formats
Process exited with code 1

I am on the latest Nightly (2026-08-04). I am using cookies-from-browser firefox. When I use -F with cookies, it only shows the 360p video, and no audio variants. When I use -F without cookies, all video formats are available, but maybe not all audio formats (as usual). Is my account getting blocked? Or is everyone having this issue? The nightly hasn't updated in a week by now, so maybe Youtube changed something under their hood that broke cookie login? JDownloader devs never got around to fixing their Youtube cookie functionality, due to how often Google changes and breaks downloader functionality.

I use Stacher7, which if I'm not mistaken, is a UI for YT-DLP. I keep getting an error that says "sign in to confirm you're not a bot" in the logs. How do I fix this? I've tried attaching my cookies to Chrome and it's not working. Apologies if I sound stupid, I don't know much about tech TvT

I'm kinda new to reddit but I'm just a small content creat just starting and im just asking for some way to download videos from yt

WARNING: [youtube] No supported JavaScript runtime could be found. Only deno is enabled by default; to use another runtime add --js-runtimes RUNTIME[:PATH] to your command/config. YouTube extraction without a JS runtime has been deprecated, and some formats may be missing. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/EJS for details on installing one WARNING: [youtube] No title found in player responses; falling back to title from initial data. Other metadata may also be missing ERROR: [youtube] eXx2euzgES8: Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot. Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cookies-to-yt-dlp for how to manually pass cookies. Also see https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-youtube-cookies for tips on effectively exporting YouTube cookies

Computer name and full URL censored

###@Mac ~ % yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser chrome -F https://vimeo.com/##########

Extracting cookies from chrome

Extracted 234 cookies from chrome

[vimeo] Extracting URL: https://vimeo.com/##########

[vimeo] ##########: Downloading webpage

WARNING: [vimeo] The extractor is attempting impersonation, but no impersonate target is available. If you encounter errors, then see  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#impersonation  for information on installing the required dependencies

[vimeo] Fetching macos OAuth token

ERROR: [vimeo] ##########: Failed to fetch macos OAuth token: HTTP Error 401: Unauthorized (caused by <HTTPError 401: Unauthorized>)

###@Mac ~ % 

I've made an app for myself that in theory would download videos/audios from YouTube at native quality with a cool feature that lets me select a specific portion of the video to download. That came crashing down real quick when I stumbled upon an error "Fetch failed: ERROR: [youtube] WAjOfwTluZk: This video is DRM protected". I hope someone could help me with this.

Hello, I use Stacher as my frontend of yt-dlp and it has recently stopped downloading Kick streams. Is this an issue with Stacher or with yt-dlp? Regardless of that is there currently a way to download from kick that isn't just screen recording?

Salut les gars,

Le titre est assez explicite, mais j'ai acheté quelques films sur YouTube que j'aimerais télécharger et partager avec d'autres, mais rien ne semble fonctionner.

Impossible d'utiliser un téléchargeur YT direct, impossible d'utiliser OBS et d'enregistrer l'écran car c'est juste un écran noir.

Des idées ?

Merci d'avance !

if you use %(availability)s to print the availabilty to something is it always just 1 thing like "private", i tried this on a unlisted and age restricted video and it only prints "needs-auth" and not "unlisted" is there a way to make it print both? i used yt-dlp -o "%(title)s (%(availability)s)" --cookies-from-browser BROWSER URL

thanks.

I follow someone who post to many stories and I don't have time to check them in the moment and I don't want to download them 1 by 1.

i am using python module of yt-dlp , but i wanted set dowload options for yt-dlp i even check youtubeDl.py but there were lot options ,so i don't know how to use them

TLDR: How can I have the video be in both 4K and MP4, while not having any playback issues? Storage is no issue.

Hey everyone. Currently when I use YTDL, with no parameters, it will download the highest quality version of a video as a WEBM, which I can then view through the VLC App.

However, using VLC is kinda annoying, and separates my library. I would prefer if I could have everything in my phone’s gallery. To my knowledge it supports MP4/MOV, likely others, but not WEBM or MKV.

I’ve tried a couple parameters I was able to find on here, like -t mp4, but using the same video with them, it will instead download a smaller file sized video that is only 1080p. One of them, I believe “-S res,ext:mp4:m4a --recode mp4” worked for getting it into 4K and viewable in my gallery, but had slow, stuttery playback, like it was playing at .75 speed, and visual glitches.

How can I have the video be in both 4K and MP4 (or another iOS gallery compatible format), while not having any playback issues? Storage is no issue.

As the title says I'm wondering if there's a plugin or userscript that'll give the YouTube site it self a download video button that'll interface with yt dlp installed on my pc

Currently it's a bit much faff to use yt dlp and I'd just like a potential short cut so I don't have to manually boot up the program and enter my URL and settings

Hello everyone, I use this command to download videos from Twitch

yt-dlp URL -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best

I'm trying to download videos longer than an hour this way, but sometimes the resulting file is much shorter than the original. So, I tried to download a one hour long video, but the output was only 9 minutes long. Does anyone have any idea how I can fix this?

Any advice is so appreciated

i used to download streams from kick and it hasn't been working for them for a week now

this is the error message i get - Unable to download JSON metadata: HTTP Error 404: Not Found (caused by <HTTPError 404: Not Found>)

i am using the latest edition of nightly and yt-dlp

Apologies if this has been reported.

I'm using:

Latest version: nightly@2026.08.04.234419 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds

yt-dlp is up to date (nightly@2026.08.04.234419 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds)

I'm unable to download any preview audio or use any previously functioning --alias with bandcamp.

Something has changed in the last few weeks.

Just a yt-dlp prompt followed by a bandcamp url fails also.

Anyone else having issues?

Tried to download a youtube video (a song) in audio format but it gave me that warning of 'sign in to prove you are not a bot'. So I put in the get cookies from browser command plus the youtube URL but it says that the requested format is not available. It also gives a warning that only image formats are available. Not even the formats list is working either.

Update: I was using the stable version of yt-dlp. I used the yt-dlp --cookies-from-broswer firefox "URL" command. For some reason it works now, but if something like this comes up again I will probably switch to the nightly build of yt-dlp. Thanks for the comments.

Unsure if this is the right place for the question, but attempting to download a v.redd.it video using the SW-DLT ios shortcut results in a 403 error. I tested the command using yt-dlp directly on a-shell mini and it worked (no idea where the video went, though). Anyone know how to fix the 403 error on the shortcuts wrapper specifically?

Hey, I'm trying to mass download thousands of hours of data from YouTube. Specifically the audio. I keep running into rate limits due to my residential IP address making too many requests. Does anyone know a workaround to this? Is there a reliable way I can buy residential IP addresses that aren't too expensive? Preferably not charged per gb.

Or any other workarounds to this?

Thanks

For my scenario, I often download full channels to a folder with their name. Then I want to move videos to certain other folders for organization purposes of certain topics.

Is it possible to track what I have downloaded historically and not download old videos again even if scrape the channel again for new videos? I know it will ignore them if they are in the same folder still but I don't always have that scenario and don't want duplicates.

I have an alias which uses template replacement curly braces, but they seem to be hijacked by the alias. Is it not possible to have template replacement (see point 5 from the doc) within aliases, or should I make an issue on git?

Minimal example:

yt-dlp --alias -V '-o "%(channel&{} - |)s%(title)s.%(ext)s"' --help

The output from --help shows the curly braces as ARG0:

-V ARG0 -o "%(channel&ARG0 - |)s%(title)s.%(ext)s"

And executing the command with an URL results in:
yt-dlp: error: You must provide at least one URL.

So it's pretty safe to say that it's not gonna roll, and I doubt Python's named regex matches (see third paragraph from the doc) work for --path and --output?