Mastodawn

hmm.... anyone else aware of YT-DLP, the YouTube downloader tool, no longer working recently?

EDIT: Apparently, people are reporting to me that YouTube itself is struggling today. Maybe that's it.

EDIT2: YT-DLP appears to have increased some dwell time in their script recently AND there were, indeed, reports of things at YouTube being all porkchop sandwiches the other day... so between an updated version of the tool and the datacenter no longer on fire or whatever, downloading wiht YT-DLP appears to work properly again. 👍

Deviant Ollam Oct 16

Update: YT-DLP appears to have increased some dwell time in their script recently AND there were, indeed, reports of things at YouTube being all porkchop sandwiches the other day... so between an updated version of the tool and the datacenter no longer on fire or whatever, downloading wiht YT-DLP appears to work properly again. 👍

(i also added this text to the original toot, too)

Oliver D. Reithmaier Oct 16

@deviantollam im following the Freetube development recently and there seems to be a major change on yt's end going on abt how they stream vids, so devs (incl yt-dl) are currently trying to adapt.

@odr_k4tana @deviantollam
My yt-dlp runs today included a few that had a warning about "SABR-only or Server-Side Ad Placement experiment" for the session.

I have never seen those warnings before (and I watch all that output until the actual downloading starts, every time).

And they are probably messing with the quality of the streams that got forced to SABR.

(using version 2025.10.14 = latest)

Jason844 🙃Oct 16

My wild guess is that #Youtube #AI became sentient and they had reprogram a couple of servers with an axe (🪓) to fix the problem. 🤪

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking with it!

@deviantollam thank you for updating the original toot.
Love it when folks do that w/these sorts of questions / updates w/later answers.

@deviantollam 🙌

It's been funky the last week or so, this will probably help a bit.

@deviantollam I have a script to run yt-dlp, and I'm starting to think I should pre-pend that script with "yt-dlp -U".

@agreeable_landfall @deviantollam
Excellent idea!
Or run it out of a daily cron job.

Keeping your ffmpeg up to date is also useful.

Flounder Oct 16

@deviantollam apparently YouTube itself is having issues

https://mastodon.social/@netblocks/115380912092569430

GothPanda Oct 16

@deviantollam I got some friends saying YouTube is down?

GothPanda Oct 16

@deviantollam Nope, it's definitely up, so forget I said that.

@deviantollam YouTube itself.

Attie Grande Oct 16

@deviantollam I've found that *frequent* updates are required to keep on top of things... generally when it's not working, I update, and then it works again.

I don't know details, but it sounds like a bit of an arms race.

@attie @deviantollam
Keeping your ffmpeg up to date is also useful, especially if you need yt-dlp to do anything with each video after downloading (audio extract, transcode, chapter split, sponsor block, all that cool stuff).

@deviantollam Still working for me as of an hour ago, but there is an upcoming change that requires an extra program to be installed

@deviantollam some people are saying youtube itself is not working?

@deviantollam i think it just came back

SpaceLifeForm Oct 16

I saw this mentioned in recent days.

SpaceLifeForm Oct 16

YT has been having problems for over 2 days now.

1.3.6.1.4.1.61513 Oct 16

@deviantollam at SondeHub hq on GPS rollover day we noticed a lack of data coming through. We scrambled to check our code. Everything looked fine. Our test radiosondes were even working. It was so confusing. Then we found out that the lack of data was because the launch sites stopped launching balloons.

The ground stations running the official software failed to handle that roll over which prevented the launches.

segfaul7 Oct 16

@deviantollam I used yt-dlp somewhat recently (2-4 weeks ago?) and it randomly worked maybe 20% of the time. No way it's DNS!

Sym (public node)

@deviantollam yt-dlp really needs to add "more uptime than youtube" to its branding

Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch)

@deviantollam It was me. I took youtube down earlier (sorry).

Apparently, it was NOT thirsty 😬

Deviant Ollam Oct 16

@catsalad hahaha

kajer :notverified:Oct 16

@catsalad @deviantollam YouTube channel @cursedcontrols would not like that

Michael Gemar Oct 16

@catsalad @deviantollam I had a visceral reaction to that.

CarbonCatalyst Oct 16

@deviantollam MPV has been working solid all of yesterday, using yt-dlp to grab the files.
FreeTube however lost the ability to play more than 5 seconds of the video again, after what felt like 3 or 4 days, after the devs managed to fix it.
YouTube backend fuckery again?

@deviantollam ik the issue is solved, but fwiw youtube has been making downloading a lot harder to the point that you might need to do some extra setup for yt-dlp, such as importing browser cookies or pulling out the po token, and of course making sure you're up to date

if you need something in a pinch, there are community mirrors of cobalt that do still support youtube downloads (eg https://cobalt.meowing.de/)

cobalt

cobalt lets you save what you love without ads, tracking, paywalls or other nonsense. just paste the link and you're ready to rock!

@rebane2001 @deviantollam What's cobalt, might use it

Multi Purr Puss

@deviantollam there were some hiccups, it currently works (in Germany)