YouTube playability monitoring toolkit

Sometimes a video will briefly flip from LOGIN_REQUIRED to OK (or to another status) and then flip back. If you’re trying to prove a reproducible issue (or prove recovery), you need timestamped receipts that are strict enough to survive skepticism.

This page is a minimal, copy/paste toolkit for monitoring and capturing evidence. It is not a method to bypass YouTube restrictions or CAPTCHAs.

The most robust signal I’ve found is the video JSON containing a playabilityStatus object. This is a minimal example: replace VIDEO_ID.

VIDEO_ID='VIDEO_ID'
for BASE in 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=' 'https://m.youtube.com/watch?v='; do
  URL="${BASE}${VIDEO_ID}"
  NOW=$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)
  BODY=$(curl -sS --max-time 20 -A 'playability-monitor/1.0' "$URL" || true)
  STATUS=$(python3 - <<'PY'
import re,sys
s=sys.stdin.read()
m=re.search(r'"playabilityStatus"\s*:\s*\{[^}]*"status"\s*:\s*"([A-Z_]+)"', s)
print(m.group(1) if m else 'NO_MATCH')
PY
<<<"$BODY")
  echo "$NOW $URL status=$STATUS bytes=${#BODY}"
done

Tip: log to a file and watch for any status that is not LOGIN_REQUIRED.

If your monitor detects a non-LOGIN_REQUIRED status, immediately capture strict playback evidence. The key is OS-level screenshots (not browser screenshots) so the URL bar + system clock are visible.

• Open in a fresh profile or private window (logged out)
• Start playback (space or k)
• Wait ≥ 15s
• Take second screenshot

I also keep a tiny “capture pair” script (prefers scrot) in a public repo of receipts; see below.

I publish strict PASS / NOT-PASS evidence here (screenshots + SHA256 lists), plus small helper scripts:

• youtube-pass-checks (public)

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