Greasy Fork

Youtube upgraded the day before yesterday, after that, this script slows down/freezes everything (youtube page, tampermonkey extenstion) IF I CLICK any download link in this.
Please check.

I've noticed the same effect with the GreaseMonkey extension under Firefox. Firefox would report that the extension is slowing down the page. However, under Firefox, none of the links would function at all. On Vivaldi (Chromium based), using the TamperMonkey extension, the slow down was not seen in the few instances tested, and at least some of the links, like the MP4 link did work as expected on the same video.

On a side, I have always noticed that left-clicking on a link has never worked for me, but right-click/save link as… did work. But even then, many of the links only yielded a 'HTML document' to download, not a A/V media file. mp4 has been the only option that yields a media file.

Can either of you give a link to a video that doesn't work?

Just prior to my post, I encountered the issue with the following link, and confirmed that the aforementioned issue is still happening.

https://youtu.be/k9RHyeL7JFA

Under Firefox / Greasemonkey, the mp4 link will only yield an HTML document for download. Under Vivaldi / Tampermonkey, the mp4 link will work.

In any instance, now and past, left-click has never done anything, right-click / save link as … has yielded a media file, on mp4 links only. On other formats, only an HTML document for download.

As of today, I have noticed that Vivaldi / Tampermonkey option is no longer working on the video posted previously, nor any other video attempted. All instances now only offer to download an HTML document.

Actually it seems every video is slow for me here, in Chromium V80, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB9suniH6MA
When it slows down,(I can not download but I can still scroll up and down in youtube page), even if I close youtube page, tampermonkey is slow, other pages are slow.

I'm always using the 360p tag. Until about november 18 averything worked perfectly (ffx 52.9.0/56.0.2, GM 3.11, YL 2.40, Win Vista/8.1).
But since then left click does not copy the name to clipboard but instead a 60 kb long mp4 link. And right clicking + Save As offers a
videoplayback.htm (1.51 kb) containing a 400 error message. I have not been able to load any video since then.

I could paste the 60 kb lionk mentioned above or make it otherwise available if desired.

--- And I like your script very very much. Thank you

Sorry, but I have to correct my mail. the left click does not yield a link but part of an html document.
Pasting it here does not work because of the contained html tags.
The contents is available as yl-leftclick.txt here: http://dl.free.fr/j4uxB9ACr

The link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRWQwM7FcVY

I tried the YouTube download again today. Using the same video I had previously used as an example ( https://youtu.be/k9RHyeL7JFA ). In this case, Vivaldi / Tampermonkey was successful, Firefox Greasemonkey is still failing.

Maybe the key to this process is persistence. This morning Firefox / Greasemonkey worked for the test videos I have been looking at. Upon the initial load of one of the videos, all links were tagged 'sig-109'; so I tapped the page refresh button, and all the 'sig-109' links turned into file size values, and the download appeared to be possible; I didn't actually do the download, just checked that the download file time was a media file and not an HTML document. This may not always be the case. In an earlier post, there were file sizes, but the download still would not work. But maybe the 'refresh' action does cause the script to fetch 'better' links?

Hi all, is the script working for all of you again?

I just checked the listed videos on my side. Firefox 83.0 (64-bit), the links show up on both Tampermonkey and Greasemonkey, and the videos can be downloaded. With the exception of one 720p video, but I think YouTube has removed that video (but not the metadata).

I also checked Chrome 87.0 (64-bit) with Tampermonkey. It also works.

It was working for me when you all reported the issues, then I didn't have time to follow-up, and now it seemed to be working again. It should be something about the YouTube HTML code that confused the script, and they have fixed it. (How nice of them. :-D)

When the video signature changes, it is normal to see sig-XXX once, then it will go away on refresh. If it doesn't, it means the signature pattern has changed too much for the script to find it. That's when I need to update the script.

I had noticed that since my posting of Nov 26, I have not encountered any issues. I haven't even seen any sig-xxx pop up since a couple of times on the 26th either. It would appear that all is currently working properly. Thanks for checking in…

My issue still happens, but since it's ok for at least two people here, maybe it's caused by something else, I'll wait and see. Thanks for your time.

@joshatt, Have you tried Firefox? Maybe your installation with the Chromium WebKit engine has an issue. Firefox has a different web engine. It may make a difference.

Hi @joshatt, I have just uploaded v2.41. See if that works better for you.

The problem should be real, don't know why not everyone encounters it or why it went away.

@nhyone I was a bit slow installing firefox, and Youtube Links does not freeze at all, then I realized it's new version 2.41, so I downgraded to v2.40, still works. Then I upgraded to v2.41 in Chromium, this time everything is perfect, no freeze with downloading, tampermonkey and other pages. Great job!

Hi @joshatt, good to hear that! So it is really a case of "overly aggressive" RegExp (Regular Expression, a form of pattern matching).

I suspect it could be a bug in the RegExp library, cos the pattern isn't anything particularly tricky. This is why it is seen in some browsers and not others. (And it goes away when the browser is updated [with the fix].)

@David07, in case you are not aware, left click will copy the video title to the clipboard. You can then paste it as the filename in the save-as dialog when you right-click and save-as.

The reason for doing this is that a normal left-click would play the video, and that's not very useful.

720p MP4 is exempted. You can left click on it and it will be downloaded. This is controlled by YouTube, probably for legacy compatibility.

@nhyone The left click function to copy the title to the clipboard has made my day. I didn't know about that, and it will be helpful in future. Everything is running fine!

Yeah, this copying title function is amazing - for anyone who want to know, I can just click link of a 720p, and my Free Download Manager will get correct file name automatically; for a 360p link, I'll left click it to copy title, then mid click it to open in a new tab, wait a second to see the real download link and click it, and paste title in Free Download Manager.