<story><title>YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos</title><url>https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/28578</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>qwerty456127</author><text>But I don&amp;#x27;t want to use the cookies, I used youtube-dl exactly to watch age-restricted videos without signing-in. I don&amp;#x27;t want YouTube to track which videos I watch and make history-based suggestions so I never sign-in and reset cookies often. I occasionally stumble upon age-restricted videos and feel curious what&amp;#x27;s there but I don&amp;#x27;t want any of them to influence what does YouTube believe my interests are so I just use youtube-dl INSTEAD of signing-in.&lt;p&gt;And by the way, I always mostly used random birth dates whenever registering anywhere because I consider that personal information and don&amp;#x27;t want to share it. I don&amp;#x27;t even know what birth date did I set when I got my GMail back in the days it required invitations.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t feel like watching an age-restricted video ever again if this actually requires identification and leaves no workaround.&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: I&amp;#x27;m actually surprised this gets down-voted.</text></item><item><author>alphabet9000</author><text>As someone else mentioned in the comments, the &amp;quot;get cookies.txt&amp;quot; [0] extension works to circumvent the age restricted measure and i have been using it with success for weeks now.&lt;p&gt;get the extension, export the cookies.txt file to a folder, then run youtube-dl in that folder with:&lt;p&gt;youtube-dl --cookies cookies.txt &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;id&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;id&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;it works as of right this minute [1] and in my experience that cookie continues to work even if you log out of your account in the browser and log back in etc&lt;p&gt;i&amp;#x27;m trying to imagine a way to have a more permanent solution, maybe if youtube-dl provided some kind of login prompt type thing to enter some your credentials to virtually log in, although i imagine that would start to be another cat and mouse game of it working and then not working.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;chrome.google.com&amp;#x2F;webstore&amp;#x2F;detail&amp;#x2F;get-cookiestxt&amp;#x2F;bgaddhkoddajcdgocldbbfleckgcbcid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;chrome.google.com&amp;#x2F;webstore&amp;#x2F;detail&amp;#x2F;get-cookiestxt&amp;#x2F;bga...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.jollo.org&amp;#x2F;ytdl.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.jollo.org&amp;#x2F;ytdl.gif&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xg15</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;But I don&amp;#x27;t want to use the cookies, I used youtube-dl exactly to watch age-restricted videos without signing-in.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, and I want a pony. We can absolutely discuss how useful or harmful age verification on the internet is, (and your points about tracking are certainly valid) - but fact is that Google implemented it.&lt;p&gt;It is not youtube-dl&amp;#x27;s job to circumvent that. Their responsibility is letting me download the videos to my hard drive that I can already view in my browser. They never advertised themselves as a tool to circumvent access restrictions.&lt;p&gt;If the new age verification broke youtube-dl in such a way that you couldn&amp;#x27;t download the video at all, I think the outrage would be justified - but that isn&amp;#x27;t the case.</text></comment>
<story><title>YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos</title><url>https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/28578</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>qwerty456127</author><text>But I don&amp;#x27;t want to use the cookies, I used youtube-dl exactly to watch age-restricted videos without signing-in. I don&amp;#x27;t want YouTube to track which videos I watch and make history-based suggestions so I never sign-in and reset cookies often. I occasionally stumble upon age-restricted videos and feel curious what&amp;#x27;s there but I don&amp;#x27;t want any of them to influence what does YouTube believe my interests are so I just use youtube-dl INSTEAD of signing-in.&lt;p&gt;And by the way, I always mostly used random birth dates whenever registering anywhere because I consider that personal information and don&amp;#x27;t want to share it. I don&amp;#x27;t even know what birth date did I set when I got my GMail back in the days it required invitations.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t feel like watching an age-restricted video ever again if this actually requires identification and leaves no workaround.&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: I&amp;#x27;m actually surprised this gets down-voted.</text></item><item><author>alphabet9000</author><text>As someone else mentioned in the comments, the &amp;quot;get cookies.txt&amp;quot; [0] extension works to circumvent the age restricted measure and i have been using it with success for weeks now.&lt;p&gt;get the extension, export the cookies.txt file to a folder, then run youtube-dl in that folder with:&lt;p&gt;youtube-dl --cookies cookies.txt &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;id&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;id&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;it works as of right this minute [1] and in my experience that cookie continues to work even if you log out of your account in the browser and log back in etc&lt;p&gt;i&amp;#x27;m trying to imagine a way to have a more permanent solution, maybe if youtube-dl provided some kind of login prompt type thing to enter some your credentials to virtually log in, although i imagine that would start to be another cat and mouse game of it working and then not working.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;chrome.google.com&amp;#x2F;webstore&amp;#x2F;detail&amp;#x2F;get-cookiestxt&amp;#x2F;bgaddhkoddajcdgocldbbfleckgcbcid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;chrome.google.com&amp;#x2F;webstore&amp;#x2F;detail&amp;#x2F;get-cookiestxt&amp;#x2F;bga...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.jollo.org&amp;#x2F;ytdl.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.jollo.org&amp;#x2F;ytdl.gif&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>63</author><text>This feels a bit overdramatic. You can remove videos from your watch history and, in my experience, YouTube will cease to give you recommendations based on them. You could also create a separate account used solely for watching videos with YouTube-dl instead of using your main one if you&amp;#x27;re worried about recommendations. I agree that it sucks that a workaround is necessary, but I don&amp;#x27;t think this particular one is worth getting too worked up about.</text></comment>