Unable to watch age restricted videos.

[zisis912]

I have only downloaded youtube-dl.exe which I use together with mpv sometimes to watch youtube videos. The thing is that when I try to watch an age restricted video, I get this response:

C:\Users\user>mpv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9roObG3yq-8
[ytdl_hook] ERROR: Sign in to confirm your age
[ytdl_hook] This video may be inappropriate for some users.
[ytdl_hook] youtube-dl failed: unexpected error occurred
Failed to recognize file format.

Exiting... (Errors when loading file)

I've seen some people suggest cookies.. But would there be a point in adding cookies if the age restriction system needs an irl identity just to let you watch the vid?

[Rainyan]

I've moved on to use the (in my opinion) more active youtube-dl fork, yt-dlp.

With yt-dlp installed, this works for me (force-seekable allows you to skip around the video):

REM Pipe to stdout ("-o -"), and then read from it with mpv ("mpv -")
yt-dlp -o - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foo |mpv --force-seekable=yes -

[ronkwann]

extract a cookie from your chrome or firefox as mentioned below;
blackjack4494/yt-dlc#7 (comment)

and use the --cookies argument, works for me

[gordon-quad]

not everyone has google account, so it would be nice to have such feature w/o requiring login if it is actually possible

[zpangwin]

here's the same workaround ronkwann mentioned but with more detail including a chrome extension for exporting the cookie: https://brian.carnell.com/articles/2021/downloading-age-restricted-videos-with-youtube-dl/

update: for Firefox users who don't want any chromium-based browsers on their pc, you can try this add-on which should do the same thing (untested):
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/export-cookies-txt/

pros: easy, works assuming you meet the age-restriction and are ok being tracked for the specific video but just want an offline copy

cons: not anonymous (requires youtube cookie so google can still track), you need a google account, article doesn't provide a firefox extension (see my update for a possible alternative), still need to meet age restriction requirements. unclear if this works on windows natively (probably works fine in cygwin / WSL)

Edit: updated based on feedback below

[zisis912]

so does it work if i give it cookies, even though I have a non-age restriction verified account? I mean, no one wants to sent their real identity to google. Also, supposing it works, should I do mpv [link] -cookies cookies.txt?

[zisis912]

doesn't seem to work

C:\Users\user>mpv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp3nRQSumKM -cookies C:\mpv\youtube.com_cookies.txt
Playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp3nRQSumKM
[ytdl_hook] ERROR: Sign in to confirm your age
[ytdl_hook] This video may be inappropriate for some users.
[ytdl_hook] youtube-dl failed: unexpected error occurred
Failed to recognize file format.

Playing: C:\mpv\youtube.com_cookies.txt
Failed to recognize file format.

Exiting... (Errors when loading file)

C:\Users\user>

[zpangwin]

so does it work if i give it cookies, even though I have a non-age restriction verified account? I mean, no one wants to sent their real identity to google. Also, supposing it works, should I do mpv [link] -cookies cookies.txt?

good point, I suppose your account also has to actually pass the age restrictions imposed by google / youtube. :-)

Yeah, the workaround is not a mechanism for bypassing either the age restriction or tracking by google / youtube. It merely allows you to get an offline copy.

There might be options like using a proxy service like nsfwyoutube but in my experience, in many cases those just don't work. e.g. from a video someone shared with me today (is a little gross but IMHO the age restriction is no way warranted)

"Richard Stallman Eats Something From His Foot"
Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ
Nsfwyoutube link: https://nsfwyoutube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ

at Nsfwyoutube, the video thumbnail displays but I am completly unable to actually play the video, in either Firefox v91 or Chromium v90.0 (on Fedora 34 for both). Likewise, youtube-dl gives ERROR: Unsupported URL: https://nsfwyoutube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ

doesn't seem to work

... [Error log]

I did not test on Windows. TBH, I wasn't even aware that you could use youtube-dl on Windows outside of running it in cygwin etc (I don't use Windows often and even then it's usually only on Win7 ... I suppose, WSL might also work on Win10). If you want to try the cygwin route, see my notes below.

On Fedora 34, the following works for me using a cookie that was downloaded in Chromium with me logged in on youtube with the extension mentioned in the article:

$ youtube-dl --version
2021.06.06
$ youtube-dl  --cookies ~/Downloads/youtube.com_cookies.txt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ
$ ls
'Richard Stallman Eats Something From His Foot-I25UeVXrEHQ.mkv'

Downloaded video plays back fine as well.

Also according to my notes from the last time I did use cygwin: I installed via chocolately (but should be the same for regular install). I had to get ffmpeg installed first and I had ended up using the pre-compiled versions built by gyan.dev, also on github. Sounds like I had issues previously when ffmpeg was not present, where youtube-dl wasn't able to merge A/V streams and it just downloaded 2 separate files for picture and for audio. My notes say I went with gyan's "git-full build" and extracted the binaries to "C:/tools/cygwin/bin". After that, I just installed youtube-dl per the instructions in the repo's README.md and it worked correctly (single file with both audio and video).

Hope that helps!

[coletdjnz]

Related:
#29729
#29659
#29578
#29086

[unclechu]

I get 400 Bad Request error when try to authenticate in order to pass age restriction barrier (MY_EMAIL is my gmail account that I use on YouTube and can view age restricted videos):

$ youtube-dl https://youtu.be/a5-9vAHBNFI --username=MY_EMAIL
Type account password and press [Return]:
[youtube] Downloading login page
[youtube] Looking up account info
WARNING: Unable to look up account info: HTTP Error 400: Bad Request
[youtube] a5-9vAHBNFI: Downloading webpage
[youtube] a5-9vAHBNFI: Refetching age-gated info webpage
WARNING: unable to download video info webpage: HTTP Error 410: Gone
ERROR: Sign in to confirm your age
This video may be inappropriate for some users.

[Syndamia]

There might be options like using a proxy service like nsfwyoutube but in my experience, in many cases those just don't work. e.g. from a video someone shared with me today (is a little gross but IMHO the age restriction is no way warranted)

inv.riverside.rocks seems to work ok-ish. It has had no issue playing the few age restricted videos I tried, and youtube-dl does download when you give a link.
The only catch is that I can download only the 360p video version, so I can't download the HD video and audio separate and just combine them.
For better or for worse, it has a built in video/audio downloader. It really isn't as nice as youtube-dl but it is a viable workaround (there might be an API endpoint or something which can be used to download from command line, but I haven't looked into it enough).