4 ms·

BTW the year is 2026 and we've got LLMs, is there, at long last, an easy way to have an YouTube downloader I can run in a container (say with Podman) that actua

BTW the year is 2026 and we've got LLMs, is there, at long last, an easy way to have an YouTube downloader I can run in a container (say with Podman) that actually works? Do I need to be logged in with a Google account for it to work? I always, since decades I want to say, ran into troubles whenever I download Youtube vids (no matter which tool I use, yt-dlp or other). It works, then doesn't anymore. Are you simply, reliably, downloading Youtube vids? How? From a VM? From a container? From your main machine while being logged on? P.S: congrats to the guys at Google, you sure made that hard

amlib 3mo ago
You always had to keep whatever youtube video downloader you were using updated at a minimum. For a good while login cookies were only required for downloading restricted videos (whatever youtube considered 18+). Now you need half a web browser to do anything and the update cadence is even crazier.
- TacticalCoder 3mo ago
  > You always had to keep whatever youtube video downloader you were using updated at a minimum. Of course. I always try with the latest versions of yt-dlp. > For a good while login cookies were only required for downloading restricted videos (whatever youtube considered 18+). Now you need half a web browser to do anything and the update cadence is even crazier. Yeah at some point in the past I had it mostly working. But basically now, what should I do? Maybe host a VM with an actual browser (not headless: just the real thing) and log into a Google account and then what, use yt-dlp from the same IP? Basically I don't get it: no clue what needs to be done for YouTube downloads to work reliably (and I'm not talking 18+ stuff: actually I had zero idea there were even vids considered 18+ on YouTube).
  - amlib 3mo ago
    >Yeah at some point in the past I had it mostly working. But basically now, what should I do? Maybe host a VM with an actual browser (not headless: just the real thing) and log into a Google account and then what, use yt-dlp from the same IP? What I've been doing is sshing to my main pc running fedora that has a legit firefox with my google/youtube cookies, have a distrobox with archlinux on it, entering that machine and then running yt-dlp there. Since distrobox has mounts your host /home dir into the guest /home it can easily source cookies from your host pc. The reason for Archlinux is that it seams to do a much better job than Fedora at keeping yt-dlp updated and with the necessary dependencies to successfully download videos. So this synergy between your main machine (where google cant't tell you are "illegitimate") + a guest machine with the "clandestine" software (in google's view lol) all stitched together by distrobox works well.
sampullman 3mo ago
Somebody is doing it, given all the ad ridden free YouTube download sites that exist.
- TacticalCoder 3mo ago
  Yeah but these are really impossible to use, which is why I tried to host my own, ad-free (and for my own use), yt-dlp wrapped in a OCI container but I never had much success : (
konart 3mo ago
Not sure about container but yt-dlp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxx --cookies-from-browser <your_browser_here> Works 100% of time for me. Obviously I do not download 10k videos daily so I may just jump over time when it is broken...

amlib 3mo ago

You always had to keep whatever youtube video downloader you were using updated at a minimum. For a good while login cookies were only required for downloading restricted videos (whatever youtube considered 18+). Now you need half a web browser to do anything and the update cadence is even crazier.

TacticalCoder 3mo ago
> You always had to keep whatever youtube video downloader you were using updated at a minimum. Of course. I always try with the latest versions of yt-dlp. > For a good while login cookies were only required for downloading restricted videos (whatever youtube considered 18+). Now you need half a web browser to do anything and the update cadence is even crazier. Yeah at some point in the past I had it mostly working. But basically now, what should I do? Maybe host a VM with an actual browser (not headless: just the real thing) and log into a Google account and then what, use yt-dlp from the same IP? Basically I don't get it: no clue what needs to be done for YouTube downloads to work reliably (and I'm not talking 18+ stuff: actually I had zero idea there were even vids considered 18+ on YouTube).
- amlib 3mo ago
  >Yeah at some point in the past I had it mostly working. But basically now, what should I do? Maybe host a VM with an actual browser (not headless: just the real thing) and log into a Google account and then what, use yt-dlp from the same IP? What I've been doing is sshing to my main pc running fedora that has a legit firefox with my google/youtube cookies, have a distrobox with archlinux on it, entering that machine and then running yt-dlp there. Since distrobox has mounts your host /home dir into the guest /home it can easily source cookies from your host pc. The reason for Archlinux is that it seams to do a much better job than Fedora at keeping yt-dlp updated and with the necessary dependencies to successfully download videos. So this synergy between your main machine (where google cant't tell you are "illegitimate") + a guest machine with the "clandestine" software (in google's view lol) all stitched together by distrobox works well.

sampullman 3mo ago

Somebody is doing it, given all the ad ridden free YouTube download sites that exist.

TacticalCoder 3mo ago
Yeah but these are really impossible to use, which is why I tried to host my own, ad-free (and for my own use), yt-dlp wrapped in a OCI container but I never had much success : (

konart 3mo ago

Not sure about container but yt-dlp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxx --cookies-from-browser <your_browser_here> Works 100% of time for me. Obviously I do not download 10k videos daily so I may just jump over time when it is broken...