youtube-dl: Handle youtube CAPTCHAs (402 errors) gracefully

Upon encountering a 402 error, youtube-dl should:

By default, throw out an error (“Due to high usage, youtube requires a CAPTCHA to be solved. Specify the --captcha-solver or --captcha-interactive option to solve the CAPTCHA.”)
If the --captcha-solver has been specified, execute the specified program. Write the CAPTCHA image to its stdin and read its stdout. Enter the trimmed stdout as the CAPTCHA and continue downloading.
If the --captcha-interactive option has be been specified, download the file to a temporary location and call ['xdg-open', 'tmpfile']. If this fails, abort with an error message. Otherwise, call raw_input() and ask for a solution for the CAPTCHA.

Implementation notes:

This is requires an option captcha-solver. For the moment, I’m not sure whether it should be a Python callback(Fits better in a library) or a string(Allows serialization of options).
It will be hard to test. I can have a process downloading 24/7 from a high-bandwidth server until it encounters this problem, but there should be a nicer way to get youtube to present CAPTCHAs
Afterwards, update the FAQ / documentation / README.md

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created 13 years ago
Reactions: 7
Comments: 16 (2 by maintainers)

Links to this issue

Commits related to this issue

Merge pull request #154 from rg3/master [pull] master from rg3:master — committed to joedborg/youtube-dl by pull[bot] 5 years ago

Most upvoted comments

Hi phihag, here is the dump - http://www.grab.lv/_external/capture-libcapng

Steps made:

youtube-dl -g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKRB9oGjsfQ (got 402)
lynx http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKRB9oGjsfQ
copied captcha iframe location (www.google.com/recaptcha/api/noscript?k=hash)
opened in chrome, filled and submitted
copied returned hash in to textbox, that was visible in lynx

So basically you’d have to forcibly save cookie jar and save passed cookies (use_hitbox, goojf, I’m not sure about VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE) before and after authentication (only captcha filling should be done in a real browser), parse returned html page (goes via 302 redirect) and get iframe location. This URL should be passed to console, so user can click or copy-paste in browser. User fills the captcha in his browser, copies returned hash and pastes in youtube-dl. And again, same as step one - save cookies and afterwards - retry downloading.

Maybe you should take a look at Mechanize - http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/ - unfortunately I’m not familiar with Python, but WWW::Mechanize works really well for Perl.

skakri on Mar 3, 2012

Just use this service https://anti-captcha.com/

Then let people submit their own login to it if they want to bypass captchas

Nottt on Feb 8, 2021

I would suggest adding auto captcha solver from https://de-captcher.com/ or some other website because if you are using this to download vids for personal use than you won’t encounter captcha but if you are doing like making a website that downloads youtube vids, than you need a service. So a auto captcha solver service is best option.

aki263 on Aug 16, 2017

In the docs there’s an option for that now:

–sleep-interval SECONDS

cheers everyone

manrodriguezf on Jun 2, 2015

What about adding OAuth 2 support so we can authorize our apps using this library against YouTube? This would solve the issue as far as I can tell.

ghost on Feb 19, 2013