YouTube OAuth2 for yt-dlp

[!CAUTION] This plugin is obsolete and no longer maintained! Official support for logging into YouTube with OAuth in yt-dlp was added in the 2024.10.22 release. See the yt-dlp wiki on how to use the official OAuth implementation.

To uninstall this plugin:

• pip: pip uninstall yt-dlp-youtube-oauth2
• pipx: pipx uninject yt-dlp yt-dlp-youtube-oauth2
• manual: delete the plugin zip or files where you installed them

This repository contains a plugin package that adds support for logging into YouTube with OAuth2 to yt-dlp's YouTube Extractors.

Please note: This plugin is experimental and may break at any time!.

For general plugin support, please see the yt-dlp discord server as responses may be slow here.

• Installation
  • pip/pipx
  • Manual install
• Usage
  • Enabling
  • Logging in

Installation

Requires yt-dlp 2024.09.27 or above.

pip/pipx

[!IMPORTANT] This package is not currently published on PyPI. Any package claiming to be this plugin on PyPI is not official.

If yt-dlp is installed through pip or pipx, you can install the plugin with the following:

pip:

python3 -m pip install -U https://github.com/coletdjnz/yt-dlp-youtube-oauth2/archive/refs/heads/master.zip

pipx:

pipx inject yt-dlp https://github.com/coletdjnz/yt-dlp-youtube-oauth2/archive/refs/heads/master.zip

Manual install

1. Download the latest release zip from releases

2. Add the zip to one of the yt-dlp plugin locations

   • User Plugins

     • ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/plugins (recommended on Linux/macOS)
     • ~/.yt-dlp/plugins/
     • ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/plugins/ (recommended on Windows)

   • System Plugins

     • /etc/yt-dlp/plugins/
     • /etc/yt-dlp-plugins/

   • Executable location

     • Binary: where <root-dir>/yt-dlp.exe, <root-dir>/yt-dlp-plugins/

For more locations and methods, see installing yt-dlp plugins

If installed correctly, you should see the oauth2 YouTube extractor plugin overrides in yt-dlp -v output:

[debug] Extractor Plugins: oauth2 (YoutubeIE), oauth2 (Youtube...), ...

Usage

Enabling

Enable logging in with OAuth2 with --username oauth2 --password ''. You can add this to your yt-dlp config file

Alternatively, if you only want to apply this for the YouTube extractor, you can add the following to a .netrc file:

machine youtube login oauth2 password ""

Logging in

On first run you will be prompted to authorize yt-dlp to access your YouTube account.

[youtube+oauth2] To give yt-dlp access to your account, go to https://www.google.com/device and enter code XXX-YYY-ZZZ

Open the link in your browser and enter the code. It will say the request is for YouTube on TV - this is normal, as we are using the YouTube on TV client for oauth ;)

The token data is saved in the yt-dlp cache.

If you encounter issues, run yt-dlp with verbose logging (-v). If you see Loading youtube-oauth2.token_data from cache, then it should be trying to use oauth.

Note: avoid running with YouTube cookies, as it may cause issues.