How to watch youtube while always-on VPN is present?

Privacy Questions
1

I’ve got a paid ProtonVPN subscription and always-on VPN connection is running 24/7 on my phone. I’ve tried a bunch of Switzerland servers (it has to be Switzerland) and for every single one of them, youtube is showing “Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot”.

As I don’t have an account and I don’t plan to create one, is there any way to watch videos? So far, I tried Tubular, PipePipe, NewPipe, LibreTube, browsers like: Mull, Cromite and Brave (both watching directly and over invidious). Also tried watching directly from duck.com website. Unfortunately, not a single thing worked.

Interestingly, before buying a subscription, I’ve tried a free version and it worked normally, although no Swiss servers of course, so I (wrongly) assumed that paid servers would work as well.

As I mostly listen stuff in the background, do you have any other suggestion how can I watch/listen those videos without changing anything on VPN side? If there’s no any easier solution, I could try hosting an invidious instance on a VPS.

1 Like
2

Install Grayjay in private space.

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3

What do you mean by a private space? I’ve installed grayjay and on a first video I got “Authentication” popup saying login required.

4
5

Maybe I’m missing something, but how does that solve the problem? It will still show the same popup asking to login.

1 Like
7

You definitely can watch youtube with proton vpn and a frontend but you need sometimes to rotate your server that happen to be blocked.
Now, if you already tried ALL the swiss servers you probably have to use another country.
The secure core options mostly work and the first hop is Switzerland.

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8

how about double hopping/chaining 2 vpn?
use cloudflare warp or apple relay which unlikely to be blocked by yt.
eg you connect to trusted vpn > trusted vpn connects to cloudflare warp > cloudflare warp connects to yt
would that setup work?

10

I have been getting this problem too actually. It doesnt work in countries like US or Mexico, but works fine in other ones. I used Grayjay, PipePipe, and even the website and it does the same thing. Im sorry this wasnt very helpful, I just wanted to say Im getting this problem too

1 Like
11

Been getting this problem for various countries, Mullvad servers. Keep getting the ‘sign in to prove you’re not a bot’. I even get this prompt on invidious and other frontends.

I am curious if this policy of being forced to sign in / tracking IPs is legal in EU (seems to affect EU servers as well).

4 Likes
12

Browser itself doesn’t work either. I’m getting the same error. I don’t have subscriptions at all, my intention is just to watch videos from time to time and sometime listen them in the background.

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14

same problem with me with Mullvad when I click on a video on a website,but if I go to YT I don’t have that problem with my Premium account.

15

Using a less popular server location within Mullvad, such as Slovakia or Serbia, usually works well for me when using Grayjay.

16

I never have this problem with Windscribe, either on YouTube.com or in Libretube.

17

Have you tried Freetube?

I use it with always-on VPN and rarely have any issue with it. It’s one of my favorite recommendations to make to people.

1 Like
18

Again, it’s not a frontend problem, it happens everywhere because of ip banning from youtube. You have to rotate your ip.

2 Likes
19

This invidious instance works great and has multiple backends

20

Still get the ‘sign in to prove your not a bot’ for Mullvad IP and invidious.

Wonder the risk of creating a burner youtube account to sign in with.

1 Like
21

Still get the ‘sign in to prove your not a bot’ for Mullvad IP and invidious.

Wonder the risk of creating a burner youtube account to sign in with.
[/quote]

Are you sure? Did you use the instance I linked?. In my experiencs, at least 2 of the 7 instance back-end (you need to switch back-end by clicking on back-end number) always work.

Please not I am not talking about Invidious in general, just this instance.

22

I literally just refresh the page and it goes away.