Cookies

Caution

Signed-in automated access can get a YouTube account suspended. Use an account you can afford to lose.

Videos the default clients can’t play without an account need the cookie of an age-verified account. To get it:

1. Install Get cookies.txt LOCALLY for Chrome or Firefox, and allow it in private windows.
2. Open a private window, sign in to youtube.com, and export with the extension. It saves www.youtube.com_cookies.txt.
3. Close the private window without signing out. Signing out invalidates the cookie.

Pass the file’s text as cookie. Ytdl keeps its youtube.com cookies and ignores the rest:

import { readFileSync } from "node:fs";

const yt = new Ytdl({ cookie: readFileSync("www.youtube.com_cookies.txt", "utf8") });

A Cookie header works too, for example from a .env file, quoted because it contains ; and =:

YT_COOKIE="SAPISID=AbCdEf/GhIjKl; LOGIN_INFO=AFmmF2sw...; __Secure-3PAPISID=AbCdEf/GhIjKl; ..."

const yt = new Ytdl({ cookie: process.env.YT_COOKIE });

An export or header without SAPISID or __Secure-3PAPISID is signed out, and the constructor throws INVALID_ARGUMENT. A cookie YouTube no longer accepts fails the lookup with AUTH_FAILED; export a fresh one.