to download content I run yt-dlp, current version: stable@2026.08.19

I don't have an account with either google or youtube nor plan I to.

the content I look for doesn't exist on other platforms.

No, not at the current moment. Hypothetically someone could set up an array of anonymous Youtube accounts to use explicitly for authentication challenges similar to how Aurora handles Google Play Store downloads, but currently that service doesn't exist for Youtube.

You would need to find an anonymous google account, or create a burner.

you could talk a streamer into broadcasting a video

https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/5084

Follow this GitHub rabbit hole, long story short it is no longer possible.

torrent-tube is relevant, you’d still need someone else to download the video and upload the torrent unfortunately.

I remember using some "YouTube video downloader" website (the kind we all used before learning about yt-dl) to download an age-restricted video recently. I had tried several of those kind of sites, and most failed. But one site in particular did allow me to successfully download the age-restricted video that I wanted. Unfortunately, I do not remember the exact website that I had used. And honestly, with what I understand about how volatile these YouTube downloader websites are, I wouldn't be surprised if that exact site doesn't even exist by now anyway.

All that to say: try a bunch of YouTube downloader sites. That is unfortunately your best bet at this point. You just have to hope to find one that works with age-restricted videos.

In the other thread for this same question someone mentioned https://ytdownloader.io/

You would need to find an anonymous google account, or create a burner.

these were dirt cheap on the darkweb circa 2014 and i hope that they still are

Is there even a way when you do have an account? We have a work Google account..

You can extract your authenticated session cookie from your browser and tell yt-dlp to use it

these were dirt cheap on the darkweb circa 2014 and i hope that they still are

I don't know how, but I'm sure Ai found a way to increase those prices too. lowkey joking here, but I'm actually scared by the idea this could be true. Edit: I mean so that Ai tools can access those videos as cheap as possible.

every bypass to age-gating at youtube that i've used, tried, or looked at no longer works, and hasn't for awhile.

Wait that's how Aurora works? jfc I hate smartphones

I feel that.

I used BiliBili and .. a browser extension called Cat Catcher to snag a music preformance that got age restricted after the live.

It was a pain, but I got it.

I was reading through this and forgot I actually was able to download an age restricted YT video about a month ago.

Ill repeat the comment here, in that I used a website called Bilibili with a browser extension called Cat Catcher. It took some fiddling but I was able to not only watch the video on bilibili, but download it with Cat Catcher.

Wow! I thought about this for a while, didn't know it already exists, even more so made by Lemmy devs

Yep. You can even see an active account in Aurora app

if ti helps any: most of the usernames/passwords were non-functional and probably why there were so cheap.

Tampermonkey, or maybe greasemonkey, had scripts which made this possible. Im not sure if they still work but it is worth checking out.

Waaaaaaaaait a minute --.--, why do you know that? :D But yes, thanks, this makes me a bit more relaxed.^^

i used to work at a noc for a gaming company in the early 2010's and i was the first and only responder -- graveyard shift -- when we suffered a ddos that employed user credentials that our postmortem found out were cheaply available -- $5 -- on the dark web.

the list had hundreds of thousands of credentials w 80%+ of them being legitimate users and but only a few hundred or so had functioning passwords.

i was able to prevent the service from going offline w a simple bash while loop that collected the ip addresses from our logs and then add them to iptables for blocking on our gateway servers dynamically and i'm thankful for the experience because the story it lets me tell during interviews enabled me to get multiple jobs since then.

Sounds very nice! Sounds like you had a great idea, and learned something from it. BTW my question why you know that was just a joke, but I'm glad I asked it. :D Thanks for sharing this experience, its always great to hear stories like that.

I did pick up on the cheekiness in your comment and it was the second most impactful moment of my professional life so I never pass on an opportunity to say something about it. Lol

Make a fake account then?

There are some websites that can do that. If you use them, just make sure you're using and adblocker.

Try Freetube