Ask HN: Yt-dlp no longer downloads videos from YouTube

5 points·lavren1974··8 comments

Ask HN: yt-dlp no longer downloads videos from YouTube. Is this my problem, or has YouTube won?

It's because YouTube is now requiring a full JavaScript runtime in order to download and play videos. There are open issues regarding this in the relevant GitHub projects, but the fix has not yet been released.

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/14404

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/33186

See also previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45358980

Update to latest version.

Search for the response error you get -- often the yt-dlp forums will show the latest workaround.

Last yt-dlp 2025.10.14, yesterday it was normal, today not!

I tried the old version, which didn't cause any problems! The result: it doesn't download.

Just retried a download on a YT vid I downloaded last night, it downloaded again.

Using version 2025.10.14 on Linux, but with this 'tweak' in ~/.config/yt-dlp/config (which was to fix a prior 'no-download' change):

--extractor-args "youtube:player-client=default,-tv_simply"

There is now a 2025.10.22 version out. You may want to give it a try.

doesn't work

IT DOES NOT WORK! Let's leave it at that.

Btw, YouTube engineers read HN, so if you have any workarounds and you publish them here, those work arounds are going to stop working!

(Yes it does work. Search harder. Don't use Google for that search.)

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