0x7d0's comments

I thought it was a joke, but it's really true

iOS and Android clients do not yet have URLs with the "n" parameter. This is why specifying the clientName as "IOS," along with the specific YouTube key, currently yields URLs that remain unthrottled.

However, acquiring this key requires decompiling the mobile application, monitoring requests through a proxy, or relying on values discovered by others. It's not necessarily straightforward.

I do agree that the code is simpler this way.

I also find it interesting that, by default, yt-dlp calls the YouTube API three times, initially as an Android client, then as an iOS client, and finally as a Web client. Depending on the video and certain other parameters, YouTube provides different formats to different clients.

Have you ever tried to download videos from YouTube? I mean manually without relying on software like youtube-dl, yt-dlp or one of “these” websites. It’s much more complicated than you might think.