Fix "Sign in to confirm your age" in yt-dlp

Why the old tricks stopped working

Age-restricted videos used to be reachable through an embedded-player endpoint that returned full metadata without checking anything. yt-dlp used it, every guide documented it, and YouTube removed it in 2021.

What replaced it is a straightforward check: the request must carry a session belonging to an account YouTube believes is an adult. Not merely signed in — verified. In several countries that verification requires ID or a payment card, and an account that has not done it is treated exactly like one that is not signed in at all.

Two flags still recommended widely, both of which do nothing here:

• --age-limit 18 — a filter, and one that points the wrong way. It tells yt-dlp to skip anything rated above the number. It was never a bypass.
• --no-check-certificate — TLS verification, entirely unrelated. It appears in this context only because it appears in every copied answer.

Telling this apart from the bot check

Both ask you to sign in and the fixes differ, so read the message:

The working approach

1. Sign in, in a browser, on a verified adult account

Play the video there first. If the browser also refuses, the account is not verified and no downloader can substitute for that.

2. Hand yt-dlp the session

3. Add a client that is not separately challenged

Cookies satisfy the age check; they do not satisfy the origin check. On age-restricted content you often hit both at once, and need to answer both:

If that pairing logs you out of the browser you exported from, use web_safari instead — the TV client authenticates differently and the mismatch can invalidate the session.

Confirming it worked

A format table means the gate cleared. A table that stops at 360p means it cleared and the formats are being withheld for a different reason — PO tokens.

If it still fails

• Cookies load and the gate holds. The account is signed in but not age-verified. Check youtube.com/account for a verification prompt.
• The browser plays it and yt-dlp does not. Wrong profile exported, or the export was from a different Google session than the tab that plays it.
• Only in some countries. Age rules are regional. A video ungated in one country can be gated in another, and the connecting address decides which rules apply.
• It worked last week. Session rotated — re-export. This is routine.