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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

I suspect the GP is concerned Youtube will take steps to block it.

This scares me a bit too, I watch basically all Youtube content via Youtube-dl. I have a script that runs every night on Mac, so that new content automagically appears in my Movies folder.

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Personally, I subscribe to YouTube channels via RSS (a little known but existent feature). Then I download all the videos I want to watch with `youtube-dl -a -`. No buffering, any video window size I want, finer-grained speed playback in VLC, and no Google account required.

Yep, exactly. When I fly i like to buffer a few hours worth of videos

What content fron youtube do you watch on such trips?

AvE. My favorite Canadian redneck destroying tools, arduinos, household gadgets, and political correctness.

would love to know more about this. do you just download new videos from your subscriptions? what sort of script? can you share it? :-)

Launchd + bash script. The channels and playlists to download from are managed in a text file. I really need to get around to throwing this up on Github, I’ll see if I can find some time to do that in the next few days and let you know.

Fair warning, it’s quite macOS specific.

Meh, you can never truly block it out. There will always be a way so long as you can actually see a video on your screen.

If Youtube ever decides to employ encrypted media extensions or similar, youtube-dl will effectively cease as a useful tool. The analog loophole will always exist but that’s not something I want to use day-to-day.

They do block it. Which is why it doesn't work if you install from your OS repo. You need to get it directly from GitHub.

And you need to update it every now and then as the game of cat and mouse plays on.

Glad you welcomed him to the real world. With things as they are now. I will let you continue to teach him.

Works fine from mine

This week yes. Cat and mouse my fellow trucker

I have been a user for many years and it feels like the distro package works at least 51/52 weeks a year, so I'm not sure it's an issue more than with any other package.

Rolling release or every six months?

youtube-dl has an update command built in that bypasses the distribution's update system. Works even on Debian stable.

You could argue this is bad because it bypasses the distro release system, but then, Youtube also updates itself without the distro's approval, so the software that interfaces with it must as well.

Rolling release. I don't think that reflects badly on youtube-dl but rather a problem with 6 monthly release distributions.

Believe that's the ever changing api rather than active attempts to block it.

Same thing happens with the newpipe android app which somehow manages to be far superior to Google's official YouTube app.

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