[Slackbuilds-users] yt-dlp and python woes

[B. Watson]

As of last night, google changed something on youtube that prevents
yt-dlp from working.

We have the latest release (2025.10.14), so it's not just a matter of
a version upgrade for us.

I found that adding this to the yt-dlp command line at least allows
some videos to be downloaded:

--extractor-args="youtube:player-client=android_vr"

We have a worse problem that's specific to Slackware: in the latest
yt-dlp git, the devs have dropped support for python 3.9. It's not
just a matter of a version check: they have started using python3
syntax that got introduced in 3.10.

The yt-dlp precompiled binaries (as used by our yt-dlp-bin) include
their own python interpreters, so they will continue to work on 15.0.

Starting with the next yt-dlp-bin update, everyone who's been
using yt-dlp should switch to yt-dlp-bin. Unfortunately there is no
precompiled 32-bit x86 binary, so if you're still using i586/i686,
you'll be stuck with yt-dlp 2025.10.14, which is already outdated and
will eventually stop working entirely.

Since python 3.9 has been officially EOLed as of October 2025, we're
going to run into other software that can't be updated. It may even be
worth the headache of having a newer python on SBo, to be installed in
/opt, but that opens a large can of worms due to python modules...