[Bug]: age restriction bypass no long works

[MARlUS003]

Guidelines

• I have encountered this bug in the latest release of FreeTube.
• I have encountered this bug in the official downloads of FreeTube.
• I have searched the issue tracker for open and closed issues that are similar to the bug report I want to file, without success.
• I have searched the documentation for information that matches the description of the bug I want to file, without success.
• This issue contains only one bug.

Describe the bug

1. find an age restricted video
2. click it
3. it does not start

Expected Behavior

id expect it to start playing since it has worked fine up until recently. its also listed in the features list in the github

Issue Labels

feature stopped working

FreeTube Version

v0.21.3

Operating System Version

windows 11

Installation Method

.exe

Primary API used

Local API

Last Known Working FreeTube Version (If Any)

No response

Additional Information

i found one closed issue on this back in 2021, but it has worked fine for me up until maybe 3 days ago

Nightly Build

• I have encountered this bug in the latest nightly build.

[absidue]

Could you please provide the link to the video, so we can check if the bypass is actually broken or if that is just one of the videos that can't be bypassed.

The bypass only works for videos where the uploader hasn't disabled embedding on other websites, for videos where embedding is disabled there is no known bypass.

[MARlUS003]

every single age restricted video i tested does not work, while it used to before. there are a few videos in my favourites that i cant watch anymore.
an example that used to work, and no longer does is this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jNKppOTL4M

[rjdg14]

every single age restricted video i tested does not work, while it used to before. there are a few videos in my favourites that i cant watch anymore. an example that used to work, and no longer does is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jNKppOTL4M

I can confirm that this is also the case for me. This is the error that such videos appear to cause:

TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'reason')

The ability to play age restricted videos has been broken in FreeTube's Android counterpart NewPipe for a while.

[pkrasicki]

every single age restricted video i tested does not work, while it used to before. there are a few videos in my favourites that i cant watch anymore. an example that used to work, and no longer does is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jNKppOTL4M

I can confirm that this is also the case for me. This is the error that such videos appear to cause:

TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'reason')

The ability to play age restricted videos has been broken in FreeTube's Android counterpart NewPipe for a while.

Invidious has this problem too. When using the Invidious API, the error message is: Error: This video may be inappropriate for some users.. This is on a video that I could play before, but I don't remember if it worked with Invidious or local API. Right now both don't work. I don't know when it stopped working, but last time it worked for me was on 10 October using FreeTube 0.21.3 and I'm still on the same version.

[MARlUS003]

Could you please provide the link to the video, so we can check if the bypass is actually broken or if that is just one of the videos that can't be bypassed.

The bypass only works for videos where the uploader hasn't disabled embedding on other websites, for videos where embedding is disabled there is no known bypass.

i just wanna add, i tried playing a video that had embeds disabled (wasnt age restricted.) i sent it in discord and it didnt play there due to "Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner" i then tested that video on freetube, and it played fine.

i might be misunderstanding your last point though, as i dont know if you meant they dont play at all, or if its age restricted AND embed is off that it doesnt play

i also found out i have been using individous since the error message i get is Error: This video may be inappropriate for some users. wasnt quite sure when i made the post

[Proctophobic]

It's a blanket issue that's affecting not only Freetube and Newpipe but seemingly everything that once handled or downloaded (age restricted) YouTube media including desktop apps and online web-downloaders etc.

[absidue]

Looks like YouTube has patched the bypass and now the only way to watch age-restricted videos is on the official YouTube clients logged into an age-verified YouTube account.

[absidue]

Therefore the solution to close this bug report will be to remove any mention of bypassing the age-restricted videos from the README and any other place that we mentioned it as a feature of FreeTube.

[rjdg14]

I think the age restricted video API has been altered several times over the past couple of years and each time a new workaround has been developed after a few days, so I'm hoping the same will hopefully be the case this time.

[absidue]

As far as I know the bypass that FreeTube was using was the only known bypass in the last few years.

[rjdg14]

As a temporary solution (until or if a new workaround is found), is there a way to hide age restricted videos from search lists and channel pages? NewPipe definitely has such a feature so I'm sure it could be easily implemented in FreeTube if it hasn't been already.

[pkrasicki]

As a temporary solution (until or if a new workaround is found), is there a way to hide age restricted videos from search lists and channel pages? NewPipe definitely has such a feature so I'm sure it could be easily implemented in FreeTube if it hasn't been already.

A better solution might be to display some kind of icon next to them by default. We should probably also add a more helpful error page that explains why the video can't be played in FreeTube without the user having to wait for the download to fail.

[absidue]

@pkrasicki We already have #3238 for handling unplayable videos better, I've updated the description to include all age-restricted videos (previously it only included the ones that weren't bypassable).

[John-foobar-Doe]

Is it possible to incorporate this script https://github.com/zerodytrash/Simple-YouTube-Age-Restriction-Bypass#userscript into FreeTube? Note: this script currently doesn't work due to the recent update of YouTube's age restricted video API, but they have a fallback of an open source Account Proxy Server, and it looks like they will fix it some time later.

[flippano]

Looks like YouTube has patched the bypass and now the only way to watch age-restricted videos is on the official YouTube clients logged into an age-verified YouTube account.

there are still bypasses with extensions that work, dont know how different that is though

[absidue]

@flippano They use age-verified YouTube accounts, so not suitable for FreeTube.