Sadly we failed at downloading that specific media.

[janmaxian]

Your question

Hello, I bought licence for your extension, but when I try to download video, there is just sign "Download failed" with info: "Sadly we failed at downloading that specific media."
Two, three times it was working and than with the same url, same video, same settings it is not working.
Extension is in Firefox browser, latest update. What's wrong? Thank you for response and wish you a good day, JM.

Addon & CoApp version and details

version: 9.5.0.2
target: mozilla
channel: stable
lang: en-GB
coapp: {"found":true,"path":"/Applications/net.downloadhelper.coapp.app/Contents/MacOS/vdhcoapp","version":"2.0.19","new_version":false}
license: {"accepted":true,"email":"","key":"9a7cff4b62894333"}
platform: x86-64 mac
UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:142.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/142.0
{
"valid_license_message_has_been_displayed": true,
"privacy_accept": true,
"http_media_download_strategy": "coapp",
"view_options": {
"all_tabs": false,
"low_quality": false,
"sort_by_status": true,
"sort_reverse": false,
"show_button_clean": true,
"show_button_clean_all": false,
"show_button_convert_local": false,
"hide_downloaded": false
},
"use_sidebar": false,
"open_count_store": 8
}

[GrampaWildWilly]

I do not work for VDH. I am just another user. Also, please read #2214.

You would help your cause greatly if you told us at least one URL of a web page on which VDH is failing. Don't say all pages fail. I'm not going to try "all" web pages. You need to help whoever might want to help you by making it easy for me (or anybody else) to try to replicate your problem. That's always the first step towards a solution.

[janmaxian]

Hello, thank you for your mail. I was trying to download videos from Youtube. Thank you and have a good day, JM.

…

On 8. 9. 2025 at 04:22 +0200, GrampaWildWilly ***@***.***>, wrote: I do not work for VDH. I am just another user. Also, please read #2214. You would help your cause greatly if you told us at least one URL of a web page on which VDH is failing. Don't say all pages fail. I'm not going to try "all" web pages. You need to help whoever might want to help you by making it easy for me (or anybody else) to try to replicate your problem. That's always the first step towards a solution. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[GrampaWildWilly]

I ask again. Give at least one example. Post a URL. Don't say just YouTube. Give at least one specific URL. If anybody is going to help you, you have to give an example that will allow somebody else to replicate your results. I have to say that I generally have no problem downloading from YouTube, so you need to give me an example that doesn't work. I could show you how I succeed in downloading from YouTube. That wouldn't help you. Give me at least one URL you have tried & failed to download.

[GrampaWildWilly]

By the way, I do not send you (or anybody else in this forum) E-mails. The E-mails are sent by GitHub because your GitHub preferences specify that you are to get E-mails when somebody posts in a discussion where you have also posted, like this one. So don't thank me for E-mails. I'm not sending any E-mails.

[bwkeyboardman]

I'm getting the same response. From Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDuHErny4nw

As a matter of fact, all YT downloads are failing for me. In the U.S. Same version as above.

[GrampaWildWilly]

With Windows 11 Pro 64-bit version 24H2 build 26100.5074, Firefox 142.0.1 64-bit, licensed VDH 9.5.0.2, CoApp 2.0.20 this is what I saw:

[GrampaWildWilly]

Oh. I suppose I should mention I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

[chrisfortin]

FWIW, I was just diagnosing the same issue, and found that using a private tab ( on firefox ) would download a youtube video that would get the 'Sadly ...' message on a none-private tab.

[heilong188-blip]

I'm having similar problems with this video

Here is the version I'm using:
version: 9.5.0.2
target: mozilla
channel: stable
lang: en-US
coapp: {"found":true,"path":"C:\Program Files\DownloadHelper CoApp\vdhcoapp.exe","version":"2.0.19","new_version":false}
license: {"accepted":true,"email":"","key":"b301b975b1c84e8b"}
platform: x86-64 win
UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:142.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/142.0
{
"valid_license_message_has_been_displayed": true,
"privacy_accept": true,
"last_download_directory": {
"__serializer_tag": "option_some",
"__serializer_value": {
"__serializer_tag": "primitive",
"__serializer_value": "H:\People and Places\Player Characters\Original Characters\🕷 Spyder\Matrix Flow\Supplemental\Fictional"
}
},
"theme": "dark",
"view_options": {
"all_tabs": false,
"low_quality": false,
"sort_by_status": true,
"sort_reverse": false,
"show_button_clean": true,
"show_button_clean_all": false,
"show_button_convert_local": false,
"hide_downloaded": false
},
"open_count_store": 13,
"successfull_dl": 29
}

[GrampaWildWilly]

Samurai Jack downloaded fine for me. I won't provide the full treatment in images since it was exactly the same as the one above for senior wellness. I will add this image:

Both my downloads came with English audio tracks. You won't see any mention of a language in the gear menu in the YouTube player. That means these are not among those situations where the audio has been dubbed into multiple languages, ostensibly by automatic tools. There is only 1 language available & that's what you get.

There are other recent threads about YouTube in this forum that you should look for. YouTube blocks your IP address for downloading if you download "too much." Too much is not clearly defined anywhere. I invite you to do your own web searches. I could not find a proper explanation of, "If you download so many videos or so many Meg, we will block your IP address for so many minutes/hours/days." It is clear that YouTube blocks IP addresses. It is not clear why nor for how long. Some people have been able to get temporary relief using a VPN. But they have to "relocate" every so often because their virtual IP address will get blocked. Some people have cleared their YouTube cookies & that seems to clear the IP block. But if you download a lot of YouTube content, you will likely get blocked again.

It is a developing opinion that this is something YouTube is doing. Not your ISP, not your browser, not VDH. It's YouTube. I surmise that you need to heal your YouTube addiction. Download less. Maybe that's why I'm not seeing problems. I download something off YouTube here & there, not constantly all day long every day. There's the occasional item I download on my own initiative. Otherwise, I just download stuff people report here in this forum, like the URLs provided in this discussion. YouTube detects downloads & blocks them while continuing to allow you to play the content in their web page even after it identifies you as a chronic downloader. I'm not developing VDH so I don't know what can be done about this. My best guess is there's nothing VDH can do about your YouTube addiction. If you download too much, YouTube is going to cut you off. VDH is simply the victim caught in the middle of all this.

[PavolAstrab]

I can confirm behavior of the downloading link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDuHErny4nw
My information about the extension and system:

version: 9.5.0.2
target: mozilla
channel: stable
lang: sk
coapp: {"found":true,"path":"/home/pavol/.local/share/vdhcoapp/vdhcoapp","version":"2.0.19","new_version":false}
license: {"unneeded":true}
platform: x86-64 linux
UA: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:128.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/128.0
{
    "privacy_accept": true,
    "view_options": {
        "all_tabs": false,
        "low_quality": false,
        "sort_by_status": true,
        "sort_reverse": false,
        "show_button_clean": true,
        "show_button_clean_all": false,
        "show_button_convert_local": false,
        "hide_downloaded": false
    },
    "open_count_store": 2
}

The extenstion correctly show available video for download,

but after clicking on the Download button, it show this output:

It also shows this information after I returned back to download again.

[PavolAstrab]

Update:
When I modified extension setting and I enabled the extension also in private incognito windows, then the downloading suddenly works.

Sorry, the picture is taken in Slovak language. Translation: Enable in private windows Enable (*) Disable

I am not using my Firefox in private windows for browse this page, but I refused the tracking in Google YouTube setting form. Maybe this is considered as private browsing by Google YouTube service.
Can anyone confirm my findings?
Another link to the short video that works for download: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ErT6r1ySGpw

[cromosombra]

same problem.

heres my info.

version: 9.5.0.2
target: mozilla
m4 macbookpro

any and all youtube videos fail.

not addicted, its for work.

why is only the grandpa answering questions and no comment from devs?

can we get a refund?

[codesandnotes]

Same issue here (Firefox on Linux Mint). But I seem to have found a workaround:

1. VDH complains he can't download the video
2. Open the "More Settings..." panel: click on the plugin to make the popup appear, click on the cog, click on "More Settings..."
3. Scroll to the very bottom and find the "Reload addon" button, and click
4. Back to the YouTube video, refresh the page so that VDH detects the media to download
5. Download ! And if it doesn't help, restart the process (but so far that hasn't happened to me).

This works for me so far. Can you guys confirm this works for you too?
If the issue can be solved this way, then I suspect the developers have introduced a bug somewhere in the line... (an unreleased thread?)
I'm usually working on 300 thinks in parallel, but as soon as I can I'll try and install the Beta or a previous version, and see if the issue is still there...

[GrampaWildWilly]

You will learn some things the same way I did, by doing some web searches . . . AI enhanced, of course. Ask questions like, "Does YouTube distinguish between playing a video & downloading it?" "How does YouTube decide to block an IP address?" "When YouTube blocks an IP address, what effect does that have?" And others I'm sure you can think up. The truth is that YouTube will let you play anything you like but it might have decided not to let you download anything at all. Think about it. You are able to view pages on YouTube. How can that be if your IP is blocked? Think about it. If your IP is just blocked globally, every attempt to view a page on YouTube would get 404 not found. Obviously, they have a more selective punishment for "abusers." Put in more questions like, "How many downloads will cause YouTube to block an IP address?" "How long does YouTube block an IP address before it permits that address to download again?" A VPN is only a temporary workaround. If you do enough downloads from your virtual IP address, YouTube will eventually block it as well. Deleting YouTube cookies seems to be a quicker way of unblocking your IP address than just waiting until YouTube deigns to expire its block. But even that is temporary. If you download a lot -- an unknown quantity -- you'll have to clean your cookies again. As for the version of VDH, do not use the 9.5.0.0 beta. The 9.5.0.2 general availability version is newer. Any older versions will just give you the old grief that led to the new version. The problem is not in VDH, not in Firefox, not in Windows, not in your ISP. It's YouTube.

[GrampaWildWilly]

All these things people are trying -- uninstalling & reinstalling VDH, the CoApp, Firefox, closing & reopening Firefox, rebooting -- they're just irrelevant. The problem isn't in our software. It's at the other end. We can only hope that Paul knows some magic formula that makes VDH sneak past the YouTube police. I wish he would let us know if this is possible.

[codesandnotes]

What doesn't make sense to me is: why is opening 5 tabs of YT videos and playing them at the same time works, while one measly thread of VDH downloading a video fails? Shouldn't YT detect 5 videos playing and block the IP in the same way it manages to block VDH ?

Because youtube are anti downloader, they don't want anyone downloading. It may even be in their terms of service that downloading is not permitted. They want everyone watching so that you see all their ads unless your paying for Premium. They'll let you watch how many videos you want as long as they get the ad revenue. Your not seeing ads when downloading, that's why they hate it and are actively trying to blocking downloaders.

@Mattmjs @GrampaWildWilly I agree: YT wants to make money. So I did a little bit of research following Grampa's suggestion. Yes, I'm lazy. Like all developers ;-)

1. We agree YT wouldn't let you download a video. So why would they expose an API to download?

2. Logically, they wouldn't expose an API method that says "download", right? But then how does VDH does its download?

3. When watching a video, YouTube streams. It doesn't "download" (except if you have Premium). I'm guessing VDH gathers stream chunks and glues them back together (Paul: can you confirm?). But then why it still doesn't work when I configure VDH to use only one thread? Shouldn't that be the equivalent of watching a video in the YouTube app?

4. I'd be surprised if YT blocks IP addresses. Why? Because due to IPv4 exhaustion IP addresses are either shared through ISPs or reused when disconnecting. This page explains it quite clearly. So I would exclude IP blocking.

5. I asked Mistral how YT could make the distinction between a client that streams (browser, app) and a client that downloads (VDH)? Misty's answer is here YT.txt

Based on that, I'd guess that:

• maybe YT changed the manifest files format? Also, it appears they do something with those: "These manifest files are dynamically generated and can change based on the viewer's actions, making it difficult to download the entire video."

• the token-based session might explain why it blocks after a while. Then again, if only one thread is used by VDH, I could just be watching lots of videos one after the other. Also, my Firefox is configured to delete cookies and site data (local storage and session) when I exit. So when restarting, a new token should be generated, right? Yet in my tests VDH stopped working even after a restart...

• the rest of the technical measures don't seem to be contenders for blocking a video downloader. But maybe I'm wrong? (again, maybe Paul clarify that?).

I agree, it probably is YT. The only way to download videos no matter what could (could!) be to mimic YouTube and intercept those streams, the way YouTube would provide them when the web app plays a video. That's a LOT of work on the dev side!

So, let's hope Paul finds a solution. If not, we'll have to move to other downloaders I guess. IF they work.

PS: MP3Juice works quite fine if you agree to get a few error messages "back end error". When retrying, it works. I suspect they must be doing something like killing the server when it has been "busted" by YT, and redeploy a new, clean one very quickly (thank you Kubernetes!)

[GrampaWildWilly]

I know it says YouTube does not permit third parties to download. But VDH has been downloading from YouTube for at least the 8 years I've been using it. The only thing I can imagine is that they have tightened their algorithm that blocks IP addresses. Yes, it blocks IP addresses. Ask that question in your favorite search engine. Folks have been in here reporting that they can play content that they can't download. And then after a few hours or the next day, the same stuff downloads fine. The typical content that people report in here is not protected by DRM nor even by any special copyright. It's just content posted by folks feeling the need to express themselves. So all that blather about protecting & encrypting does not apply to pretty much everything people have been complaining about here.

You almost sound like you're trying to reverse engineer VDH. I don't think Paul is going to reveal all his trade secrets. I mean, there has to be some justification for paying for a license. I just want him to say what YouTube is doing & whether there's anything he can do about it in VDH. I know "something is coming soon." Paul could take 5 minutes out of his day to clarify some high-level points here.

[codesandnotes]

Ok @GrampaWildWilly , that sounds a bit snarky to me.
But then with 20+ years in software development, maybe I do speak too technical. I'm sorry about that. Let me try to clarify.

I know it says YouTube does not permit third parties to download.

Yes. the attached Mistral answer also says that "YouTube uses token-based authentication to control access to video content. Tokens are short-lived and specific to the user's session, making it difficult for third-party tools to access and download videos."
Which means cleaning your browser cache (cookies and all) could actually help..

Yes, it blocks IP addresses. Ask that question in your favorite search engine.

No it doesn't.
As you MIGHT have read have you followed the link I posted, 1 IP address = 100 or 1000 users. Because if each user had it's own address IP, there wouldn't be enough for everyone. So YouTube doesn't block a single user IP, otherwise they would also block their Premium users for no reason.
Did you google it?

(to be fair, it DOES block IP addresses of servers in Russia or China, because servers usually get assigned a static IP)

So all that blather about protecting & encrypting does not apply to pretty much everything people have been complaining about here.

Encrypting? What are you talking about, YouTube is not a messaging app like Signal...
I'm not here to complain, by the way. I was merely trying to figure out what could be happening, and how I could help others. And share it on a forum. I was also hoping that the "blather" might somehow help Paul or other people in figuring the cause. The technical origin of the cause.

You almost sound like you're trying to reverse engineer VDH. I don't think Paul is going to reveal all his trade secrets.

Sorry, I'll mark a pause here while I LMAO...
Ok, I'm back.
If you knew what reverse-engineering an application implies from a developer perspective, you would realize that the vast majority of developers do not have no such time to waste. We're talking months and years here. So no, it's not even "almost sound like". Rather "it's impossible to reverse-engineer just by asking questions".
Personally, given how much time and effort it costs to reverse-engineer, I'd rather earn my money by coding and spend the remaining time with my family.

I just want him to say what YouTube is doing & whether there's anything he can do about it in VDH. I know "something is coming soon." Paul could take 5 minutes out of his day to clarify some high-level points here.

Really, that must be a misunderstanding.
I'm not asking anyone to reveal anything, or trying to steal anyone's income.
I'm just trying to guess why VDH is not working anymore and what we could use as a workaround while Paul figures how to circumvent YouTube's shenanigans. In 8 years of VDH he must have fixed those things quite a few times.
Yes it would be nice to have Paul clarify some stuff, like: "it looks like YouTube has modified this and that, I can fix that on the next release"

Anyway.
If you read this far @GrampaWildWilly , please don't worry: I promise I'll stop trying to figure out what could be the technical cause of VDH not working at the moment. I'm sure Paul will figure it out: given what he did so far, I expect him to come up with the fix pretty soon. You can even respond to my comment here and tell me to take a hike: I won't react to it.
I admit it, I've been a bit snarky too with my answers above. I'm sorry. I don't like it when someone gets snarky with me while I spend my time trying to help...

One thing I will do for the other VDH users though: if I find a way around before Paul has fixed this, I'll share it.

Cheers!

[ZeroCool8814]

Very glad I just purchased a second license for FF.....

Wishing best of luck fixing this.

Not working on any videos regardless of length

[oddsprocketed]

I've been having this problem for a few weeks but as of today it's working for me with Firefox on Youtube.

[cromosombra]

it suddenly started working for me too.

[Mattmjs]

@codesandnotes , the ip blocking is theory based of this other discussion. See comment and my reply. Click the show previous replies.
#2190 (comment)

Let's say youtube can tell the difference between viewing and downloading. I did have a download fail recently when someone
brought a short to the forum. It wasn't from downloading too much prior to the short. Maybe it's something as simple as the
google server returning a 403 error. VDH get's it's files from HLS sources, the people maintaining yt-dlp recently dropped HLS formats
for youtube explaining that 403 errors were becoming more frequent. Maybe this is the issue.

[jarmake]

It's hard to say. My experience today was when I tried to downlaod anything, all the downloads would fail. Then I tried the reload extension trick and I was able to download again. Maybe around 10 videos. Then everything started failing again and the reload extension trick didn't help. So I connected to a VPN server and the downloading started to work again. So I think there's some kind of IP blocking going on.

[GrampaWildWilly]

This sounds like a scientific approach. This is good. It would be interesting to know if, after some downloads through the VPN, whether you ended up being blocked again. After that, it would be interesting to know if switching your VPN point-of-presence to a different location would let you download some more. Separately, there is a hypothesis that YouTube blocks downloads based on cookies. It would be interesting (my favorite expression) to know if, after the next time you get blocked, whether clearing cookies related to YouTube unblocks downloads for you. To delete cookies, I recommend using a browser extension that manipulates cookies. Firefox's own tool for deleting cookies also deletes cache entries & it is my hypothesis that cache is irrelevant to this problem. You can always get the effect of clearing cache selectively by reloading any web page with Ctrl+F5 instead of simply F5. There is probably almost never a need to follow the advice offered by nearly every help desk on the planet in response to nearly every problem to clear cache.

I also want to point out that your experience pretty clearly shows that VDH works fine, that the problem is external to your system & external to all the software (operating system, browser, VDH version, VPN, anything else) on your system.

[Arcanus6669]

All of www.Darknessporn.com is broken as of today.
https://darknessporn.com/53913-scooby-doo-parody-sfan-car-sex-cartoon/

[Mattmjs]

What do you mean broken.