yt-dlp Unable to Download Video http Error Forbidden | How to Fix

When yt-dlp returns an “HTTP Error Forbidden” or similar messages (like “403 Forbidden”), it usually means the service (like YouTube) is actively blocking the request, often due to geographical restrictions, age restrictions, or rate limits.

Here are the most common and effective solutions to fix this issue:

1. Update yt-dlp

This is the most frequent fix, as video platforms constantly change their backend code to prevent downloading. An older version of yt-dlp may not know how to handle these new changes.

Open your terminal or command prompt and run:

yt-dlp -U

2. Use a User-Agent or Referer

Some services block requests that don’t look like they are coming from a standard web browser. You can often bypass this by telling yt-dlp to pretend it’s a browser.

Use the -H (header) option to set a common User-Agent string:

yt-dlp -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)
 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/100.0.4896.75 Safari/537.36" "URL"

3. Bypass Geo-blocking or Age Restrictions

If the video is blocked in your country (geo-blocked) or has an age restriction, the video platform will return a “Forbidden” error.

For Geo-blocking

Use a proxy or VPN that has an exit node in a country where the video is available. You can pass the proxy to yt-dlp using the --proxy option:

yt-dlp --proxy "http://username:password@IP_Address:Port" "URL"

For Age Restrictions

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You can often fix this by providing your cookies from a logged-in session of your browser. This tells the service that you are logged in and have verified your age.

1. Install the cookies.txt browser extension (available for Chrome/Firefox).
2. Go to the video platform’s website, log in to your account, and visit the video page.
3. Use the extension to export your cookies to a file (e.g., cookies.txt).
4. Run yt-dlp using the --cookies-from-browser flag:
   Bash

   yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser firefox "URL"
   # or
   yt-dlp --cookies cookies.txt "URL"
   

4. Check for URL Issues (Playlists/Channels)

If you are trying to download a playlist or a channel, the error might be with a single video in the list.

Use the --ignore-errors flag to skip videos that throw a Forbidden error and continue downloading the rest of the content:

yt-dlp --ignore-errors "Playlist_URL"

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