This is a follow-up to #14404, which announced that yt-dlp will soon require an external JavaScript runtime (e.g. Deno) in order to fully support downloading from YouTube.
With the release of yt-dlp version 2025.11.12 , external JavaScript runtime support has arrived.
All users who intend to use yt-dlp with YouTube are strongly encouraged to install one of the supported JS runtimes.
The following JavaScript runtimes are currently supported (in order of recommendation, from strongest to weakest):
Deno recommended for most users
https://deno.com/
https://github.com/denoland/deno note: if downloading from Deno's GitHub releases, get deno not denort
minimum Deno version supported by yt-dlp: 2.0.0 the latest version of Deno is strongly recommended
Node https://nodejs.org/
minimum Node version supported by yt-dlp: 20.0.0 if using Node, the latest version (25+) is strongly recommended for security reasons
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