Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

Posted by bertman 11/12/2025

Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support(github.com)

1106 points | 627 commentspage 5

nextworddev 11/12/2025|

Youtube obviously is making it harder to download videos because... it's training data

zhengiszen 11/12/2025||

Then someday it with require an entire llm installed locally

jrochkind1 11/12/2025||

I am impressed at their resourcefulness.

Knock on wood not to jinx it, but I wonder why this manages to stay up on github when eg paywall-busting chrome extensions get banned from there (because of DMCA takedowns I guess?)

shbooms 11/12/2025|

there was already an attempt to take it down back in 2020/2021 [0]. The DMCA claim's main argument was that ytdl was circumventing Techincal Protection Measures (TPMs) in order to access the content. Thanks to a letter from the EFF [1] which explains how ytdl accesses content in the same way that a browser does (i.e. it does circumvent anything such as DRM), github rejected the takedown.

this is also why ytdl has stood firm in saying they will never attempt to be compatible with anything protected by DRM.

[0] https://github.blog/news-insights/policy-news-and-insights/s...

[1] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-1...

jrochkind1 11/12/2025||

Thanks for context with good links!

gethly 11/12/2025||

Is there an UI wrapper for this?

andy_ppp 11/12/2025||

Am I right in saying they need to be able to run JS code from YouTube to be able to get the download URL at this point? Deliberate obfuscation I'm guessing? I guess Deno makes the code fairly safe to execute and I guess the chances of YouTube daring to download spyware onto your machine is minimal :-)

userbinator 11/13/2025||

I still remember when it was as simple as a request to /get_video?video_id=XXXXXXXX with possibly a &fmt=YY parameter.

Great fuckings to those at YT, I wonder if they ever feel bad for what they're doing or they are just happy to get $$$.

alex1138 11/13/2025|

For me the principal issue with Youtube (for many years was copyright overreach, yeah ok safe harbor, but you can't tell me that they couldn't have done a better job) has been censorship/demonetization which is effectively censorship

Everything from that follows, the entire philosophy of the product

It makes me wonder if all of Google is like this

rbbydotdev 11/12/2025||

great tool for archiving ICE abuses posted on multiple platforms

creaktive 11/12/2025||

Ah! So, that’s why brew no longer updates yt-dlp on my iMac from 2017 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

blissofbeing 11/12/2025|

Why deno over bun?

einsteinx2 11/12/2025|

Per their wiki [0], these are their notes on Bun:

- No permission restrictions available. Scripts have full file system and network access.

- Supports downloading EJS script dependencies from npm (--remote-components ejs:npm).

- No support for SOCKS proxies when downloading EJS script dependencies from npm.

[0]: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/EJS#notes-2

nsonha 11/13/2025||

I'm suprised that corporate software has not picked up deno for these reasons.

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