I have been using Video Download Helper in Firefox.  I just downloaded a
video that worked perfectly.  Attempting to download the same video with
yt-dlp resulted in a file just over half the size that appears to have
video only, no audio.

I will note that, while Video Download Helper usually works, there have
been instances when it did not, and I had to use yt-dlp instead, so this
is not a complete fix, but it does show that there are methods that do
successfully download youtube videos currently.

Marc


On 10/24/25 6:56 AM, Fred wrote:
> On 10/22/25 21:40, wirelessduck--- via Dng wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On 23 Oct 2025, at 11:30, David Niklas via Dng <dng@???>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> Recently, yt-dlp stopped working on the site it was originally made
>>> for,
>>> youtube with no easy fix possible.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Problems have been cropping up recently, such as YT's requirement for a
>>> PO token to be passed when downloading, but in the last few days the
>>> whole manner of getting a video just broke.
>>>
>>> The authors noted that the complexity of YT's site has significantly
>>> increased leading to them needing to support a full JS runtime in their
>>> tool whereas they used to use a sort of hacked together python JS
>>> runtime.
>
> Maybe someone could write an add-on/extension to Firefox rather than
> duplicating major functions that Firefox already has.
>
>>>
>>> They suggested that people install the Deno runtime, as it uses a
>>> sandbox
>>> by default. IDK how much we should trust sandboxes, but that's what
>>> they
>>> said.[1]
>>>
>>> Other options include Node version 21 or later (they say that they
>>> may try
>>> and backport support for version 20). Currently, Devuan stable is
>>> running
>>> node 18.
>>>
>>> The other option they intend to support is Bun. [2]
>>>
>>> They may also support QuickJS in the future, and PhantomJS support is
>>> being dropped.
>>>
>>> Neither Deno nor Bun are available in Devuan repos as far as I can see
>>> and backports doesn't contain a newer version of nodejs.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> IDK exactly how updating packages in Devuan work (just depend on
>>> Debian?),
>>> but I'm writing in hopes that yt-dlp, and thus it's dependencies,
>>> can be
>>> updated on our systems at some point in time.
>>>
>>> The update from the yt-dlp folks can be found here[3] and the github
>>> issue is here. [4]
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> David
>>
>> fnm can install any version of node. Works for me.
>>
>> https://github.com/Schniz/fnm <https://github.com/Schniz/fnm>
>>
>> Otherwise the nodesource apt repository should work if you prefer deb
>> packages.
>>
>> https://nodesource.com/products/distributions
>> <https://nodesource.com/ products/distributions>
>>
>> Tom
>>
> Does installing node or deno make yt-dlp work again?  Could someone
> make a list of instructions that results in a working youtube downloader?
>
> Best regards,
> Fred
>
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