Sign in

The error#

If the playability reason contains sign in (the check is case-insensitive), yt-dlp strips a trailing This helps protect our community. Learn more when that sentence is present, then appends _youtube_login_hint. In 2026.10.26 that hint is:

Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication. See  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cookies-to-yt-dlp  for how to manually pass cookies. Also see  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-youtube-cookies  for tips on effectively exporting YouTube cookies

There are two spaces before and after each URL in the source.

Password and OAuth are separate:

Login with OAuth is no longer supported.
Login with password is not supported for YouTube.

Each of those lines is followed by the same hint quoted above. The OAuth line is an ExtractorError with expected=True. The password line is a warning.

What triggers it#

The sign-in branch runs only when formats are missing and the reason text contains sign in. OAuth is _perform_login when the username starts with oauth. Password login hits the warning on any other username.

How to confirm#

Read the line before the cookie hint. If it is YouTube's own sentence and it contains sign in, you are in the playability branch. If it starts with Login with OAuth or Login with password, you passed credentials yt-dlp will not use for YouTube.

Fixes#

The hint names the flags yt-dlp still accepts: --cookies-from-browser or --cookies. The wiki URLs in the message are the project's own notes on exporting cookies. Cookies are an account session. YouTube can expire them, and a datacenter IP can still hit the IP-blocked page even with cookies.

-t sleep is not this branch. That flag is named on the rate-limit page.

SocialScrape#

Video details are GET /v1/youtube/video. Transcripts are GET /v1/youtube/video/transcript: the video's own captions. A video with no captions returns transcript_unavailable and costs nothing. AI transcription of YouTube audio is not available yet.

Failed requests cost 0 credits. New accounts get 100 credits on signup, no card.