If I click the refresh button in the browser bar, it plays. Grok says that YT made some change to make it not work with ad blockers. I haven't tried turning my extensions off yet to see what's going on.
Posted on 01/29/2026 7:22:52 PM PST by Cowman
I routinely download videos and play them back offline. In the last couple days though nothing will download. Real downloaded recognizes the video and attempts to start the download but then I get the unable to download error. Its the same with Rumble, Dailymotion, and Youtube. I have tried multiple browsers and downloaders and its still the same. I have reinstalled real player and my browsers and all software is up to date. I can download MP3s through itunes and pod bean so its not a hardware or WiFi issue. Is there some kind of a blocker out there?
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Yes. Yesterday. 4K Video Downloader was erroring out on me.
Negative, Ghost Rider. The pattern is full.
Not me. I use real player with Brave Browser. No ads and no problems downloading. I download audio books all the time to play in the shop.
Good luck
Check available disk space. MP3 files are small, but videos are big.
Problems yesterday (YT). Updated 4K downloader and all is well.
I have plenty of disk space and I cleared up more. I don’t think its a browser or downloader issue as I tried several different ones and different combinations. Really its like all video downloads are being blocked. I even tried different ISPs
No. I just downloaded from youtube without a problem.
I haven't used Real Player in over 20 since it was voted one of the top 5 worst video players. It was so bloated, it stopped my computer from working. I didn't realize it's still around or that anyone used it.
I would consider getting rid of it and trying vlc.
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
In my house Youtube has been acting all messed up for the past couple of days.
Have to hit refresh to see the video.
Probably a plot to double their hit counts...
bookmark for later
cloudflare has been doing blocking of things they think are bots, to keep ai bots from stealing their content and using their bandwidth.
It’s done with a combination of cookies and other things, so if the connection doesn’t get identified as a browser, it gets blocked.
There are some hacks to get around it, but I haven’t had time to dig into it yet.
Actually I don’t use the player just the downloader. The
Layer is too cumbersome to use but the downloader is rather convenient with one click downloads
I don’t know about Rumble or Dailymotion, but I have had a lot of trouble downloading from YouTube in the past couple of months. (I use the Open Source yt-dlp software on Linux, which also runs on Mac and Windows.)
Apparently Google has become concerned about heavy loads on their servers, which costs them more money for bandwidth. This is probably partly due to people downloading more, and probably also due to high resolution videos (like 4K).
So they have changed the details in the way videos are delivered. One thing they seem to have been doing for a while is getting feedback on the exact delivery rate (e.g., KB/s) at each short time interval, and adjusting things to reduce bandwidth while keeping acceptable picture quality.
Another thing they seem to have introduced more recently is so-called Proof of Origin Tokens. These are supposed to identify the requsting device so that the data rate can be adjusted: there is little point is using as high a data rate to deliver to a small smart phone screen as when delivering to a large wall-mounted screen.
The thing that bothers me is that these Tokens aren’t permanent, but have to be dynamically generated, and it’s obscure and rather difficult.
This means that YouTube has the ability to cut off a down-loader, or even an ordinary YouTube viewer, whenever they want.
Although I sympathize with Google’s desire to reduce bandwidth costs, I can’t help but suspect that they are also trying to increase lock-in to their products.
Here are some links that might be helpful.
You should also search for other articles about problems downloading videos — there are lots of them!
(Maybe NOT using Google’s search?)
https://www.winxdvd.com/streaming-video/yt-dlp-not-working-fixed.htm
1. YouTube Changes Its Player & API Frequently
The number one culprit is YouTube itself. They constantly tweak their streaming infrastructure, DRM, and API behavior to prevent automated downloads. Recent updates force certain formats to use SABR streaming, break nsig signatures, or limit separate audio/video stream downloads. This is why your -f 136+140 download suddenly throws 403, while -f best (combined) still works. It’s not a bug in yt-dlp—YouTube intentionally rotates things, and the downloader has to adapt.
5. Rate-Limiting and IP Restrictions
If you download multiple videos in quick succession, YouTube may temporarily block your IP. Using sleep flags (—min-sleep-interval, —max-sleep-interval, sleep-requests) helps mimic human behavior and reduces the chance of 403 errors. VPNs can also bypass region-specific restrictions.
Proof of Origin Tokens
https://deepwiki.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/3.4.1-potoken-authentication-system
Lots of details
P.S. In an earlier service restriction, Google killed their previous password-secured IMAP access to Gmail, and started requiring OAUTH2 security. So I built an “experimental” OAUTH2 method so I could still get at Gmail from Claws-Mail. Unfortunately the OAUTH2 tokens expired more often than I wanted to access my Gmail account, making it not worth the trouble, since I never found a way to automatically renew them. (I had made it “experimental” to avoid the $70K fee to make it “official”. And I think they since deleted it.)
A solution might be to end each program, turn off the computer (do not use restart), let the computer sit for 5 minutes, then turn it on again. Restart the program you wanted first and see if it works this time.
Bump
If I click the refresh button in the browser bar, it plays. Grok says that YT made some change to make it not work with ad blockers. I haven't tried turning my extensions off yet to see what's going on.
I’ve never had problems, but you can use the Snipping tool. I have used it before.
I use Brave browser with no problems.
bump, thanks for the tip
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