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Comment by jtbayly | Hacker News Reader

You already have to sign in to view some videos, don’t you? Does YT-dL not have a way to handle those right now?

It does, but it's broken.

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/23860

The developers are not responding to the issue, and from what I understand it is borderline impossible to fix, because there is an entire security team behind the Google login protection. The only workaround is to login with a browser and copy the cookies from it to youtube-dl.

> The only workaround is to login with a browser and copy the cookies from it to youtube-dl.

That's really easy to do with postman.

>postman

It just works. Every time. It’s gotta be one of the most unappreciated tools out there right now.

"Postman" seems like a pretty generic name.

Looking quickly online, maybe you're meaning this one?

https://www.postman.com

I'm pretty sure that is what they mean, yes. It is a nice tool. Lets you write HTTP(S) templates with parameters and whatnot, save them in groups, send them, handle the response, etc.

Funny. I initially read that as “The Postman” - kind of like “The Batman.”

And your response is regarding whether it should be referred to in the definite article.

Why not simply create a youtube-login command that does nothing but launch an electron instance that lets you login into youtube and then returns the cookie?

youtube-dl could then call that command to obtain the cookie.

There’s a good chance that behavior would result in a CAPTCHA.

The idea, I think, is that it literally launches a browser to let a human do the whole thing.

You can automate fetching Chrome’s cookies. This is generally very useful for scraping.

https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc is maintained by someone who responds to issues.

Do you? I've never tried to watch any that have required it.

Maybe there's Red-only content that isn't advertised/recommended to non-subscribers?

Content with a certain age threshold triggers login. The last time I looked at this, embedding these videos was still possible without logging in. So there are definitely ways in accessing the content without authentication.

Hm. If embedding works maybe my ad-blocking is sufficient; or I just haven't come across any that require it. I mostly just watch woodworkers/machinists/electronics/etc. Sort of conceivable it could be age restricted but would also be surprising.

There's also members-only content on some channels that requires a paid subscription to access.

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