[youtube] Failed to extract any player response;

[teachernightowl]

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Checklist

• I'm reporting that yt-dlp is broken on a supported site
• I've verified that I have updated yt-dlp to nightly or master (update instructions)
• I've checked that all provided URLs are playable in a browser with the same IP and same login details
• I've checked that all URLs and arguments with special characters are properly quoted or escaped
• I've searched known issues and the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones. DO NOT post duplicates
• I've read the guidelines for opening an issue
• I've read about sharing account credentials and I'm willing to share it if required

Region

United States

Provide a description that is worded well enough to be understood

Context: I tried yt-dlp on both Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and the Debian 12. Both were freshly installed, minimal, fully updated before installing yt-dlp.

I used this bash script to install yt-dlp...

#!/bin/bash
sudo wget https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -O /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
sudo yt-dlp -U
exit

I have tried all three branches - stable, nightly, and master - on both machines. All of them generate the same error.

Provide verbose output that clearly demonstrates the problem

• Run your yt-dlp command with -vU flag added (yt-dlp -vU <your command line>)
• If using API, add 'verbose': True to YoutubeDL params instead
• Copy the WHOLE output (starting with [debug] Command-line config) and insert it below

Complete Verbose Output

sysadmin@debian12:~$ sudo yt-dlp -U
Latest version: nightly@2024.04.21.232710 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds
yt-dlp is up to date (nightly@2024.04.21.232710 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds)
sysadmin@debian12:~$ yt-dlp -vU --compat-options no-certifi --no-check-certificates "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cpu9Z3z6pU"
[debug] Command-line config: ['-vU', '--compat-options', 'no-certifi', '--no-check-certificates', 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cpu9Z3z6pU']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, pref UTF-8, out utf-8, error utf-8, screen utf-8
[debug] yt-dlp version nightly@2024.04.21.232710 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds [ff38a011d] (zip)
[debug] Compatibility options: no-certifi
[debug] Python 3.11.2 (CPython x86_64 64bit) - Linux-6.1.0-20-amd64-x86_64-with-glibc2.36 (OpenSSL 3.0.11 19 Sep 2023, glibc 2.36)
[debug] exe versions: none
[debug] Optional libraries: certifi-2022.09.24, requests-2.28.1, sqlite3-3.40.1, urllib3-1.26.12
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[debug] Request Handlers: urllib
[debug] Loaded 1810 extractors
[debug] Fetching release info: https://api.github.com/repos/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds/releases/latest
Latest version: nightly@2024.04.21.232710 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds
yt-dlp is up to date (nightly@2024.04.21.232710 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds)
[youtube] Extracting URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cpu9Z3z6pU
[youtube] _Cpu9Z3z6pU: Downloading webpage
WARNING: [youtube] unable to extract initial player response; please report this issue on  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using  yt-dlp -U
[youtube] _Cpu9Z3z6pU: Downloading ios player API JSON
WARNING: [youtube] _Cpu9Z3z6pU: Failed to parse JSON (caused by JSONDecodeError("Expecting value in '': line 1 column 1 (char 0)")); please report this issue on  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using  yt-dlp -U
[youtube] _Cpu9Z3z6pU: Downloading android player API JSON
WARNING: [youtube] _Cpu9Z3z6pU: Failed to parse JSON (caused by JSONDecodeError("Expecting value in '': line 1 column 1 (char 0)")); please report this issue on  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using  yt-dlp -U
[youtube] _Cpu9Z3z6pU: Downloading iframe API JS
WARNING: [youtube] unable to extract player version; please report this issue on  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using  yt-dlp -U
[youtube] _Cpu9Z3z6pU: Downloading web player API JSON
WARNING: [youtube] _Cpu9Z3z6pU: Failed to parse JSON (caused by JSONDecodeError("Expecting value in '': line 1 column 1 (char 0)")); please report this issue on  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using  yt-dlp -U
ERROR: [youtube] _Cpu9Z3z6pU: Failed to extract any player response; please report this issue on  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using  yt-dlp -U
  File "/usr/local/bin/yt-dlp/yt_dlp/extractor/common.py", line 734, in extract
    ie_result = self._real_extract(url)
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/local/bin/yt-dlp/yt_dlp/extractor/youtube.py", line 4079, in _real_extract
    webpage, master_ytcfg, player_responses, player_url = self._download_player_responses(url, smuggled_data, video_id, webpage_url)
                                                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/local/bin/yt-dlp/yt_dlp/extractor/youtube.py", line 4043, in _download_player_responses
    player_responses, player_url = self._extract_player_responses(
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/local/bin/yt-dlp/yt_dlp/extractor/youtube.py", line 3733, in _extract_player_responses
    raise ExtractorError('Failed to extract any player response')

[bashonly]

Can you confirm this please:

• I've checked that all provided URLs are playable in a browser with the same IP and same login details

Also:

--compat-options no-certifi --no-check-certificates

Why?

Are you sure that the responses to your requests are actually coming from youtube?

[teachernightowl]

Yes, confirmed. The URL is playable in the browser on the same computer as the cli was returning the error.

That said, your questions pointed me to the solution. There is DNS filtering on the network that blocks YouTube and the browser - Firefox - has DNS set so the browser was using different DNS than the terminal.

The reason I was using the --compat-options no-certifi --no-check-certificates parameters was because I was getting ssl errors at first and reading forums offered that as a solution.

Thanks for your help. I am closing the issue.