[youtube:history] It can wipe the watch history list

[asparago]

I was trying to get my YouTube Watch History. I needed only the file IDs, not the content.

So I used:

h@debian:~/ythistory$ youtube-dl -u myuser -p mypass https://www.youtube.com/feed/history --skip-download >> ytlist.txt

It successfully worked until there was an unavailable video, the 428th out of 8713... The download process was aborted.

So I tried again adding the parameter "--ignore-errors", but only 4 files were listed. I checked on my YouTube account and the Watch History was empty. That was really sick.

I don't know why it happened, is this a bug of the program?

Also, is there a way to restore the watch history?

Are IDs saved in a temporary file which I can restore in some way?

[jaimeMF]

As far as I know youtube-dl can't modify the Watch History list because we just extract the video urls from the feed, but I haven't tested it in a while.
Maybe you accidentally deleted it in the browser interface?

Also, is there a way to restore the watch history?

Probably no.

Are IDs saved in a temporary file which I can restore in some way?
youtube-dl doesn't store any info.

[asparago]

Maybe you accidentally deleted it in the browser interface?

No way. I didn't open the browser while trying the program from shell.

Something could have happened it's a sort of "flood protection" by Google, because I made a lot of tries with different parameters.

I don't know what happened.

[jaimeMF]

I have dowwloaded a history with 110 videos and it didn't wiped it, @dstftw how many videos did you have?

[dstftw]

I had 441 videos and started it with command youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/feed/history -u email -p password --skip-download, then interrupted on video no. 313. After that it has wiped all videos apart from 24 latest.

[dstftw]

After I've watched another ~50 videos my whole history is back now. So this looks like an issue on YouTube side.

[asparago]

Today it's back to me, too.

It's a YouTube problem (or flood protection?).