146
Is there still anyway to bypass Youtube "Sign in to confirm your age" bullshit in 2026?
(sh.itjust.works)
Video ownloader it works but not very convenient
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
146 points (99.3% liked)
No Stupid Questions
47514 readers
960 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Just using yt-dlp also works, but locally.
Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't appear to: 
Does it still work for you? for me it stopped working a while back
Yes, and all the download sites and tools don't use anything else either. They all just wrap yt-dlp.
If it stopped working for you, you might have to read the docs on the specific error you're getting to see how to get around it. YouTube does try to make it harder, but it's technologically difficult to fully block. There are workarounds for basically every case as far as I'm aware.
I checked it now and it works fine if I don't use VPN. but regular youtube also work fine without VPN.
If I switch to VPN both yt-dlp and normal youtube give same error "please login to prove you are not a bot" which is the problem OP is originally trying to find work around for
load more comments
(1 replies)
Tested it, and can second that this does technically work.
That took one agonizing hour to download but the video seems to work.
Thanks.
If PipePipe can't do it I doubt its possible. Unless their exists some region that u can VPN to that doesn't require said sign in but I doubt it
Can you still vpn to a country that doesn't have age laws
Such as?
I'm in PA, USA and afiak there are no such laws anyways... this is just youtube being a dick
Edit: Anyways, I found one comment mentioned this web downloader thingy https://app.ytdown.to/en23/
And it works... slow af but works.
But it wont be long before they break it again... ugh
Ok then did YouTube implement the age checks globally then that sucks a lot
load more comments
(1 replies)
VPN with a double hop ending in France or Brazil usually works for me.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
You can either wait or hop from VPN endpoint to endpoint, though both are workarounds. I'd suggest that we can expect more of this too.
I mean I even tried without VPN and still doesn't work.
If only there were videos on YouTube of people cleaning naked or trying transparent clothes.
Can't find much in terms of a penis.
This is an unfair double standard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMOSBZi6cHU&t=43
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upxEK7dbYBI&t=55
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQXvRrLmS1E&t=131
Finally some real penises:
Not what OP asked for bur there was a mexican gal that would do carpentry naked
load more comments
(1 replies)
Seems like internal A/B testing. happened to me few weeks ago in whatever device/front ends. I tried Tor but maybe it is already blocking Tor, still requires sign in. Using VPN finally works in few countries.
But 3 days later I can use NewPipe as normal.
Well except I think age-restricted videos are never accessible without login from any frontends
Invidious is what I've been using forever. On mobile, PipePipe and a VPN set to Brazil or France is the best solution.
load more comments
(1 replies)
It's automated testing to see if they can force you to login.
My VPN (mullvad) lets me use socks5 proxies for any exit node, so when I hit this I just change my freetube proxy number and it works. Annoying
It would be nice to integrate a list of socks5 proxies into freetube and have it auto rotate
Unfortunately, thats only true for the, "Please sign in to confirm you're not a bot." gate. The age gate is a separate system, that blocks on a per-video rather than per-user basis.
Have you tried making an account, lying about your age and signing in?
load more comments
(3 replies)
Unwatched app for those on ios
Have you tried yt-dlp?
This doesn't work on age-restricted videos. You need to pass browser cookies where you have logged in to download such videos.
Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't appear to work.
I tried to use Seal from Fdroid, which I think uses that yt dlp thing. Doesnt work.
Ive never heard of seal before. No idea if that's a good software or how it's using yt-dlp or what version of yt-dlp it is using.
I would try yt-dlp on a computer with the --verbose flag.
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
If that video contains some kind of nudity, it is possible to find it on a site like ytboob. Otherwise there is no way to watch it without an account.
load more comments
(3 replies)
I understand the sentiment, but gotta say YouTube is one service that is much better when logged in. I have my history and personalization disabled everywhere except YouTube. If I open YouTube's front page in an incognito tab, it's wall-to-wall trash on the level of Jerry Springer. Meanwhile I've been getting recommendations to my precise taste for years. Lots of good music found in the recs.
I don't even open random YouTube links from social media under my account, so as to not mess up the recommendations. Always using an incognito tab instead (which is admittedly foiled by the ‘sign up’ thing when I have to use a vpn).
This was changed some time ago. This is YT front page when you're logged out:
Which is exactly what I want to be recommended by YT.
load more comments
(1 replies)
It's less about privacy more about minimalism...
I don't want too many accounts to manage... I just wanna watch a bunch of stuff and forget it
Ran into this on newpipe last week, just loaded a webpage in mobile Firefox then went back to newpipe and refreshed the page.
Not sure about your situation, but there are definitely work arounds for some situations.
Invidious
Tried... it doesn't work for age restricted videos.
Same with every alternative frontend i'm pretty sure
view more: next ›