🎬 YouTube Converter (MP4 / MP3)

A reliable Apify Actor for downloading YouTube videos or extracting audio. It does not require proxies, as we use our own cookies. Built for automation, APIs, and production workflows.

✅ MP4 & MP3 output
✅ Quality selection
✅ Optional cookies for gated content
✅ Retries & resilient downloads
✅ Apify Store–friendly health checks

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📥 Input

Required / common fields

Field	Type	Description
healthCheck	boolean	Enable health-check mode (false by default , set false if not)
videoUrl	string	YouTube video URL
format	string	mp4 or mp3
quality	string	best, 1080, 720, 480 (MP4 only)

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🚀 Features

• 🎥 Download single YouTube videos
• 🎵 Extract audio as MP3
• 🎚 Select video quality (best, 1080, 720, 480)
• 🔐 Optional YouTube cookies for:
  • Age-restricted videos
  • Login-required content
  • Bot-protected streams
• 🔁 Automatic retries & robust error handling
• 🧪 Health-check mode for Apify Store auto-tests

🍪 How to Export YouTube Cookies (Chrome) important!

Some YouTube videos require authentication (login, age verification, bot protection).
To download these videos, you must provide YouTube cookies. (I strongly recommend using cookies as 90% of the videos are gated)

This Actor supports cookies in Netscape format.

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✅ Recommended Method (Chrome Extension)

The easiest and safest way is to use a browser extension.

Step-by-step (Google Chrome):

1. Install the extension
   here👉 https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/get-cookiestxt-locally/cclelndahbckbenkjhflpdbgdldlbecc

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2. Open YouTube

• Go to https://www.youtube.com
• Make sure you are logged in
• In the top-right corner, click the puzzle icon (Extensions)

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3. Use the Chrome extension

• Click the “Get cookies.txt” extension icon

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4. Copy the cookies

• Click the “Copy” button

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5. Paste cookies into the Actor

• Open the Actor input
• Paste the entire content into:
  • YouTube cookies (Netscape format)

✅ Done — authenticated downloads will now work.

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🔐 Security Notes

• Cookies are never logged
• Cookies are used only during the run
• Cookies are not stored permanently
• You can revoke cookies anytime by logging out of YouTube

⚠️ Do NOT share cookies publicly — they grant access to your account.

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🧪 Troubleshooting

Still blocked?

• Make sure you are logged in to YouTube
• Re-export cookies after logging in
• Try a lower video quality (480p / 720p)
• Avoid private or deleted videos

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❓ Do cookies from one video work for another?

Yes.

Cookies are account-based, not video-based.

You can:

• Export cookies once
• Use them for any YouTube video
• Until you log out or cookies expire

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🧪 Health Check Mode (Apify Store)

This Actor supports a special health-check mode used by Apify Store. When actual download is expected, this should be set to FALSE

When enabled:

• 🚫 No video is downloaded
• 🔐 No cookies are required
• ⚡ A lightweight result is returned instantly

This ensures:

• ✅ Stable daily store tests
• ✅ No unnecessary bandwidth usage

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🍪 Cookies (optional)

Field	Type	Description
cookiesText	string	YouTube cookies (Netscape format)
cookiesBase64	string	Base64-encoded cookies file

🔒 Cookies are never logged and are used only during the run.

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📤 Output

📊 Dataset result

Each successful run produces one dataset item:

{
  "ok": true,
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...",
  "format": "mp4",
  "quality": "480",
  "fileName": "Video Title [id].mp4",
  "fileSizeBytes": 23817291,
  "storedAs": "OUTPUT_FILE",
  "cookiesUsed": true
}