Fix yt-dlp 403 and "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" on server IPs
The problem
yt-dlp ran fine on my laptop but failed on the VPS with:
ERROR: [youtube] dQw4w9WgXcQ: Sign in to confirm you're not a bot.
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and intermittently ERROR: unable to download video data: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden on the googlevideo URLs. The datacenter IP is the problem, not the tool.
What didn't work
- Rotating User-Agent strings — the block is keyed on IP × session, not on the UA header.
--extractor-args "youtube:player_client=android"alone — helps with some walls, still 403 from a flagged datacenter range.- Free datacenter proxies — YouTube's blocklist covers those ranges too, so you rotate your way into the same error.
The fix
Bring a real logged-in session's cookies, and put the traffic on a residential exit:
# 1) export cookies from your own logged-in browser:
# firefox extension "Get cookies.txt LOCALLY" -> youtube.cookies.txt
yt-dlp --cookies /root/youtube.cookies.txt \
--proxy socks5://user:[email protected]:1080 \
-f "bv*[height<=1080]+ba/b" \
-o "%(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s" \
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
On a box with a browser, --cookies-from-browser firefox does the export inline. Cookies expire — schedule a re-export roughly every two weeks or the bot-wall returns with the exact same error.
Why it works
YouTube scores the request on IP reputation and session trust together; a flagged datacenter IP alone is enough to trigger the bot check, and a valid logged-in cookie jar plus a residential exit restores the trust the IP check removed.