cobalt's main instance is currently unable to download anything from youtube due to harsh network limitation from youtube's side. our requests get blocked, and previous network-related workarounds no longer work.

cobalt will show this error as long as this issue is present:

please don't make duplicate issues and don't reply with anything off-topic. all complaints and nags will be hidden as off-topic. this issue affects everyone, including you.

update (15.08.2025): strict network limits on youtube's side are still present, we can't go around them at our scale. we will have to come up with a completely different way of interacting with innertube that doesn't involve a centralized "proxy" server. using google accounts is not an option, they get restricted faster than we can replace them, and it's an insane amount of manual labor nearing slavery.

related threads: #1375