sometimes youtube believes I’m a bot and won’t allow downloading stuff from them with yt-dlp 2026.07.04 on debian 13.6.
I could torify the whole computer, so next time I open a terminal and execute yt-dlp it uses tor by default. Sadly, I don’t know how to do that.
Another way would be to torify only yt-dlp, but neither do I know how to do that.
Changing the mac address and hostname did nothing.
Can you help?
oh hey, I had that issue recently where YouTube thought I was a bot and yt-dlp gave me an error “sign in to confirm you’re not a bot”. This issue is actually mentioned on the yt-dlp FAQ and they said to use a proof of origin token provider (POT provider). After setting up the recommended one made by Brainicism, I only had to run it once, open a video with the POT provider in the background and since then YouTube doesn’t believe I’m a bot anymore. Now yt-dlp works without using the POT provider again.
Not sure for how long, sometimes YouTube still denies me videos on the first try but usually it works after a re-try.
PS.: On the FAQ it is also mentioned to not use your YouTube account token with yt-dlp, else YouTube might associate your account with a bot and ban it.