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[Extractors] Add OAuth usage guide for Youtube (#43)
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coletdjnz authored Oct 22, 2024
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Expand Up @@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ You can do this with:

### Manually acquiring a PO Token from a browser for use when logged in

The process for obtaining a PO Token for use when yt-dlp is logged into an account is similar to the above. The PO Token obtained should work with either cookies or [OAuth](https://github.com/coletdjnz/yt-dlp-youtube-oauth2).
The process for obtaining a PO Token for use when yt-dlp is logged into an account is similar to the above. The PO Token obtained should work with either cookies or [OAuth](#logging-in-with-oauth).

Steps:

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -70,3 +70,33 @@ One way to do this is through a private browsing/incognito window:
1. Open a new private browsing/incognito window and log into YouTube
2. Open a new tab and **close the YouTube tab**
3. Export cookies from the browser then **close the private browsing/incognito window** so the session is never opened in the browser again.

## Logging in with OAuth

An alternative to using cookies is to log in with OAuth. This method avoids the need to export cookies.

> [!CAUTION]
> Only use one method of authentication at a time. Using both cookies and OAuth at the same time may cause issues.
Enable logging in with OAuth by passing `--username=oauth --password=""` to yt-dlp. You can add this to your [yt-dlp config file](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp?tab=readme-ov-file#configuration), but this will result in yt-dlp trying to use this username/password combination for all sites. If you only want to apply this for the YouTube extractors, you can add the following to a [.netrc file](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp?tab=readme-ov-file#authentication-with-netrc):

```
machine youtube login oauth password ""
```

You can optionally supply a custom profile name that the account credentials will be saved under with `--username=oauth+MY_PROFILE`. This allows you to switch between multiple accounts. Otherwise, the default profile is used.

A refresh token can optionally be supplied as the password. This may be useful if cache is disabled, or you want to initialize the cache from the refresh token.

### Logging in

On first run you will be prompted to authorize yt-dlp to access your YouTube account.
> [youtube] oauth: Initializing authorization flow
>
> [youtube] oauth: 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 expected, since we are using the YouTube on TV client for oauth.

The token data is saved in the yt-dlp cache (you can specify a custom cache location with `--cache-dir`).

If you encounter issues, run yt-dlp with verbose logging (`-v`). If you see `oauth: Logged in using profile "XXX"`, then yt-dlp is attempting to use oauth.

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