Related to this.
There have been issues with yt-dlp recently that have been more or less on YouTube’s side. See these relevant GitHub issues.
{YouTube} Immediate HTTP Error 403 on download
{YouTube} Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot. This helps protect our community
YouTube is experimenting with some sort of new aggressive IP-based block on videoplayback urls - perhaps to replace or complement the existing “sign in to confirm you are not a bot” error on the player endpoint. This produces an HTTP 403 error on videoplayback urls, regardless of client and protocol (HTTPS, DASH, HLS, UMP, SABR, ONESIE).
- If you are seeing this for the first time, backing off further downloading/requests for a little while may help to lift it. It is recommended to make use of the yt-dlp sleep options to help avoid it.
- Otherwise, you might need to change IP.
- Update: this comment for more details.
When you’re affected by this issue, you’ll only be able to watch YouTube while signed into their site on a browser. Other locations (third-party app, Discord, Private mode) will not work.