tubesync/docs/using-cookies.md

TubeSync

Advanced usage guide - using exported cookies

This is a new feature in v0.10 of TubeSync and later. It allows you to use the cookies file exported from your browser in "Netscape" format with TubeSync to authenticate to YouTube. This can bypass some throttling, age restrictions and other blocks at YouTube.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Using cookies exported from your browser that is authenticated to YouTube identifes your Google account as using TubeSync. This may result in potential account impacts and is entirely at your own risk. Do not use this feature unless you really know what you're doing.

Requirements

Have a browser that supports exporting your cookies and be logged into YouTube.

Steps

1. Export your cookies

You need to export cookies for youtube.com from your browser, you can either do this manually or there are plug-ins to automate this for you. This file must be in the "Netscape" cookie export format.

Save your cookies as a cookies.txt file.

2. Import into TubeSync

Drop the cookies.txt file into your TubeSync config directory.

If detected correctly, you will see something like this in the worker or container logs:

YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS,mmm [tubesync/INFO] [youtube-dl] using cookies.txt from: /config/cookies.txt

If you see that line it's working correctly.

If you see errors in your logs like this:

http.cookiejar.LoadError: '/config/cookies.txt' does not look like a Netscape format cookies file

Then your cookies.txt file was not generated or created correctly as it's not in the required "Netscape" format. You can fix this by exporting your cookies.txt in the correct "Netscape" format.