yt-dlp is failing to download videos, and one possible solution might be to add --impersonate chrome to the command line arguments (see for example https://github.com/orgs/yt-dlp/projects/6/views/1?pane=issue&itemId=76261638&issue=yt-dlp%7Cyt-dlp%7C10837). Attempting to use yt-dlp with arguments "--impersonate chrome" results in a backtrace: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python-exec/python3.12/yt-dlp", line 8, in <module> sys.exit(main()) ^^^^^^ File "/usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/yt_dlp/__init__.py", line 1100, in main _exit(*variadic(_real_main(argv))) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/yt_dlp/__init__.py", line 998, in _real_main with YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py", line 759, in __init__ raise YoutubeDLError( yt_dlp.utils.YoutubeDLError: Impersonate target "chrome" is not available. Use --list-impersonate-targets to see available targets. You may be missing dependencies required to support this target. This feature appears to require the pypi curl_cffi package. Perhaps add a cffi use flag to yt-dlp to add a dependency on a new gentoo package curl_cffi?
It seems curl_cffi in turn depends on curl-impersonate.
The curl-umpersonate fork used by curl_cffi is at https://github.com/lwthiker/curl-impersonate.
Had a peek at it before, and the curl-impersonate package is rather messy and I'd rather not handle it myself just because I maintain yt-dlp. If it's ever added (by another developer) I could add a optfeature to mention support (nothing else to do for the yt-dlp side, the dependency just needs to exist at runtime). Note that it does exist in overlays, e.g. from https://github.com/Tatsh/tatsh-overlay/tree/master/dev-python/curl-cffi
(In reply to Ionen Wolkens from comment #3) > Had a peek at it before, and the curl-impersonate package is rather messy > and I'd rather not handle it myself just because I maintain yt-dlp. (could potentially change that stance if I end up needing that myself, but currently do not)
A worrying quote from https://curl-cffi.readthedocs.io/en/v0.5.9/compile/: "This build process is very hacky now, but it works for most common systems." There doesn't seem to be a newer version of this page.
Created attachment 925173 [details] dev-python/curl-cffi-0.10.0 ebuild Bumped ebuild from the tatsh-overlay referred to in an earlier ebuild. yt-dlp-9999 requires curl-cffi 0.5.10 or 0.10.x (see https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/yt_dlp/networking/_curlcffi.py). I also installed net-misc/curl-impersonate-0.9.5 from the tatsh-overlay. With these yt-dlp appears to be happy: $ yt-dlp --list-impersonate-targets [info] Available impersonate targets Client OS Source ------------------------------------ Safari-17.2 Ios-17.2 curl_cffi Safari-18.0 Ios-18.0 curl_cffi Chrome-99 Android-12 curl_cffi Chrome-131 Android-14 curl_cffi Edge-99 Windows-10 curl_cffi Edge-101 Windows-10 curl_cffi Firefox-133 Macos-14 curl_cffi Firefox-135 Macos-14 curl_cffi Safari-15.3 Macos-14 curl_cffi Safari-15.5 Macos-14 curl_cffi Safari-17.0 Macos-14 curl_cffi Safari-18.0 Macos-15 curl_cffi Chrome-99 Windows-10 curl_cffi Chrome-100 Windows-10 curl_cffi Chrome-101 Windows-10 curl_cffi Chrome-104 Windows-10 curl_cffi Chrome-107 Windows-10 curl_cffi Chrome-110 Windows-10 curl_cffi Chrome-116 Windows-10 curl_cffi Chrome-119 Macos-14 curl_cffi Chrome-120 Macos-14 curl_cffi Chrome-123 Macos-14 curl_cffi Chrome-124 Macos-14 curl_cffi Chrome-131 Macos-14 curl_cffi Chrome-133 Macos-15 curl_cffi But it doesn't work around my original download issue :-(
Fetching the same movie with portage's yt-dlp-2025.03.31 fails with an error: ``` An extractor error has occurred. (caused by KeyError('config_url')); 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 ``` while downloading yt-dlp with `pip install "yt-dlp[default,curl-cffi]"` (2025.4.30) downloads it without issues (however slowly).
