Skip to content
ytkew

Signing in

Search, radio, playlists by ID and lyrics need no credentials at all. Only your own library — playlists, liked songs, liking tracks — does.

Terminal window
ytkew --auth browser     # lifts an existing Firefox login
ytkew --auth cookie      # paste a Cookie header from any browser
ytkew --auth oauth       # Google Cloud "TVs and Limited Input devices" client

From the browser

Section titled “From the browser”

--auth browser reads the YouTube cookies straight out of your Firefox profile, so signing in at music.youtube.com is all the setup there is.

It searches native, snap and flatpak Firefox plus LibreWolf, Waterfox and Zen. It reads a snapshot rather than the live database, since Firefox keeps it open in WAL mode; deletes that snapshot afterwards; and checks the cookies against the API before writing anything.

Chromium is not supported. It encrypts cookie values with a key held in the desktop keyring, which needs both a keyring client and AES-GCM to undo — a different job. Use --auth cookie instead.

Pasting a header

Section titled “Pasting a header”
  1. Open music.youtube.com, signed in.
  2. Open devtools and pick any request to music.youtube.com.
  3. Copy the whole Cookie request header.
  4. Run ytkew --auth cookie and paste it.

It is validated against the API before it is saved, so a bad paste fails immediately rather than looking fine until you open your library.

OAuth

Section titled “OAuth”

--auth oauth runs a device flow, but needs a Google Cloud OAuth client of type TVs and Limited Input devices, which you have to create yourself. Its tokens also expire and are refreshed on load. Cookie auth is easier and does not expire on a timer.