YouTube videos fail to load frequently!
CMajor7
Starting with the 28th of March, I'm receiving very frequent reports of users that YouTube videos fail to load in my world. After some testing I concluded that it's other worlds too. To quantify this problem I ran some data and visualized it. Since the 28th, the Error rate of videos in my world increased to around 20%, meaning every 5th video fails to load. This also exactly lines up with when VRChat had the yt-dlp resolver updated for the last time.
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°sky
curious to if a fix in underway or not. would like to hear someone official let us know, as its a little annoying not being able to watch youtube videos 🙁
WubTheCaptain
YouTube made some changes, which may result in incompatible/broken sig extraction with older clients. yt-dlp 2026.02.21 and yt-dlp-ejs 0.5.0 have been released to address this.
Feature request: Update yt-dlp to 2026.02.21 to resolve YouTube playback issues
Ericbazinga
WubTheCaptain VRchat needs to be way more on the ball about updating yt-dlp in a timely fashion.
WubTheCaptain
Ericbazinga VRChat is often updating yt-dlp timely, and your frustration may be misdirected. This isn't about VRChat.
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Previously when VRChat was using some former yt-dlp version older than 2025.11.12 and YouTube playback was broken for weeks in VRChat, the delay on new yt-dlp release with YouTube playback fixes was on the upstream yt-dlp project. There was a two week gap between October 31, 2025 (when PRs #14157 & #14843 were merged to yt-dlp) and November 12, 2025 (when yt-dlp 2025.11.12 was released) to fix YouTube playback in VRChat.
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January 20, 2026 came around and users were reporting issues with YouTube playback in VRChat again. It took ~9 days for a new yt-dlp 2026.01.29 release to become available at upstream.
When yt-dlp 2026.01.29 was released to resolve YouTube playback issues, the new yt-dlp 2026.01.29 release was announced in this Canny topic on January 30, 2026. This "feature request" to update was completed timely by VRChat on February 1, 2026. It also clearly resolved YouTube playback issues for users on VRChat Ask forum:
- https://ask.vrchat.com/t/video-player-not-working-still/47722/4
- https://ask.vrchat.com/t/video-players-not-working-anymore-quest-3/47645/5
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After yt-dlp 2026.02.04 was released, I made a feature request to update yt-dlp to 2026.02.04 on February 6, 2026, and it was implemented silently on February 12, 2026.
It's not clear to me if this yt-dlp 2026.02.04 update addressed any YouTube playback issues for anyone in VRChat.
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Recent changes made by YouTube and resolved by yt-dlp 2026.02.21 also didn't affect all users, but YouTube's changes in March 2026 affected many more - and continue to do so.
There's no buttons to press currently to resolve YouTube playback issues when the upstream yt-dlp-ejs is having an issue (Recent players failing on all variants · Issue #51 · yt-dlp/ejs · GitHub). Player javascript version
9f4cc5e4
used by yt-dlp 2026.03.03 may also be broken at this time, so updating to yt-dlp 2026.03.03 in VRChat may not solve the issue according to yt-dlp-ejs issue #51 comment #4012181664.WubTheCaptain
Ericbazinga You're invited to investigate and contribute a patch upstream to the yt-dlp-ejs project to fix and update yt-dlp in a timely fashion for the current YouTube playback issue in VRChat.
I'm keeping an eye on the yt-dlp-ejs issue and yt-dlp releases, before submitting a feature request to VRChat to update yt-dlp.
WubTheCaptain
yt-dlp 2026.02.04 and yt-dlp 2026.01.31 have been released.
A feature request which may help avoid YouTube's latest bot detection affecting some users: Update yt-dlp to 2026.02.04 to resolve YouTube playback issues
WubTheCaptain
yt-dlp 2026.01.29 has been released, with a plethora of YouTube playback fixes.
As an experiment, I was personally unable to get stock yt-dlp 2026.01.29 from upstream (read-only attribute set on yt-dlp.exe) to play both YouTube and Twitch videos on AVPro and Unity Video players in VRChat, while VRChat's yt-dlp 2025.11.12 succeeded to play Twitch videos in AVPro/Unity Player and YouTube videos in Unity Video player (but not AVPro) for reasons unknown and unclear from logs. (NB: Using this is strongly discouraged beyond experimental testing, I've reverted to VRChat's yt-dlp for safety.)
Upstream stock yt-dlp 2026.01.29 from command line succeeds to download a video from YouTube on my machine, however. A test URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEAC8eeQWcg
WubTheCaptain
PS C:\Users\linda.LINDALAP\AppData\LocalLow\VRChat\VRChat\Tools> .\yt-dlp.exe --version
2026.01.29
VRChat has released an update to yt-dlp and YouTube playback in AVPro video players is working again.
WubTheCaptain
Based on feedback on VRChat Ask forum, this seems to have resolved YouTube playback issues for several others as well.
StormRel
Merged in a post:
URLs not working
༒ʝɛȶ༒
YouTube URLs seem to no longer work in most worlds and has been like this for almost every player lately.
StormRel
Merged in a post:
Video Players not working... again.
Its Sephy
In every world i go, they are just giving the ''video error'' and ''failed to load video'' messages, it's been more than a week already.
StormRel
Merged in a post:
All video players not working
UviDawg
open vrchat, o to any world ith video player, "playr eror" others see ost error, no matter wht i try to put on. help. its been a month. i just want my music.
"[AVProVideo] Error: Loading failed. File not found, codec not supported, video resolution too high or insufficient system resources."
AndreKangaroo
This error issues literally pisses me off
I can't even watch my own shows and sing my favorite songat any karaoke hangout. THIS JUST FREAKING ABSURD!!!!!!!! 😡😡😡😡
WubTheCaptain
As for recent yt-dlp YouTube playback issues from the past week and uptick in bug reports on VRChat Canny on this issue, there are pull requests & commits at upstream yt-dlp to address YouTube playback issues with .m3u8 playlist downloads, and other issues:
- [ie/youtube] Solve n challenges for manifest formats by bashonly · Pull Request #15602 · yt-dlp/yt-dlp · GitHub https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/15602
- [ie/youtube] Adjust default clients by bashonly · Pull Request #15601 · yt-dlp/yt-dlp · GitHub https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/15601
As of writing this, yt-dlp has not formally released a new version with these patches yet. After the upstream project releases a new version of yt-dlp at some point in the future, it'll also take some time for VRChat Team developers to backport changes to their fork of yt-dlp and include it for VRChat users (unless VRChat decides to cherry-pick and backport those patches earlier into their fork).
Can this issue be closed at the next yt-dlp update in VRChat?
Kizzy
WubTheCaptain bro why do you comment on every single post here acting like a wanna-be janny or member of the developer or community team?
why are you asking for the issue to be closed before it's even acknowledged, let alone fixed?
WubTheCaptain
I don't think this bug report is actionable, as long as VRChat uses the upstream yt-dlp project to download and stream videos. It really isn't even much of a bug report with steps to reproduce and logs, but more of a complaint or a meta-issue for tracking how YouTube does their A/B testing and operates their platform.
I think it'd be better to make actual feature requests if there are specific issues, e.g. "Update yt-dlp to version XXXX.YY.ZZ" or "Backport upstream yt-dlp pull request #XXXX / commit abcdef into VRChat to improve YouTube playback".
VRChat updates its yt-dlp version semi-frequently. As of VRChat 2025.4.2p1 (Build 1769) on Steam (that's live right now), we're on yt-dlp 2025.11.12, which should have included all the YouTube fixes up until that point.
CMajor7 Has the issue in your original post been resolved between April 2025 and December 2025? Do you have more visualized data?
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