YouTube Liked & Saved Video Sync

TL;DR — TubeArchivist ⭐ 8.1k is the best turnkey option: import a Firefox cookie once via its companion extension and liked videos / Watch Later become ordinary subscribed playlists [1]. For CLI-only use, yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser firefox --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=LL" does incremental sync but needs cookie refresh every ~2 weeks [3] [4]. ⚠ All cookie-based sync carries an IP-ban risk — yt-dlp itself now flags this [7].

The core challenge

YouTube’s Liked Videos (?list=LL) and Watch Later (?list=WL) are private playlists — no public URL, no unauthenticated access. Every tool ultimately passes browser cookies to yt-dlp [3], which accesses YouTube via the InnerTube API [16]. That means two recurring headaches:

1. Cookie extraction: Only Firefox works reliably in 2026. Chrome 127+ (July 2024) introduced app-bound encryption that blocks all external cookie readers [4]. OAuth and bearer-token approaches don’t work with yt-dlp’s InnerTube path [16].
2. Cookie lifespan: YouTube expires cookies in approximately two weeks when used outside a browser [7] [16]. Re-exporting Firefox cookies is a recurring manual step unless automated.

Additionally, yt-dlp has a known, unresolved bug where the liked playlist sometimes returns only ~11 items instead of the full list — YouTube’s dynamic pagination isn’t always fully traversed [5]. Running the command multiple times (with --download-archive) usually recovers the full set.

Tool comparison

TubeArchivist — recommended for liked/saved sync

TubeArchivist ⭐ 8.1k [2] has the best UX for this use case. The Companion browser extension ⭐ 256 (Firefox and Chrome) pushes your cookies directly into TubeArchivist with one click [15]. Once imported, liked videos and Watch Later are treated identically to any other playlist subscription [10]:

• Add the liked videos URL (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=LL) as a playlist subscription
• Enable periodic rescan in settings → TubeArchivist pulls new likes automatically
• A single cookie is shared across all TubeArchivist users on the instance

Validation: TubeArchivist considers a cookie valid only if yt-dlp can successfully access the private liked playlist — so you know immediately if auth has expired [1].

Pinchflat — flexible with caveats

Pinchflat ⭐ 5.0k [6] supports cookies via a cookies.txt file placed in the config directory. Three behaviors are configurable per source [7]:

• Disabled — never uses cookies
• When Needed — tries without cookies first, retries with them on failure
• All Operations — cookies on every request

⚠ As of 2026, yt-dlp’s own documentation warns that YouTube cookies can trigger IP bans and recommends users “proceed at their own risk” [7].

yt-dlp CLI — incremental sync pattern

For a cron-driven setup, the standard command [13] [14]:

yt-dlp \
  --cookies-from-browser firefox \
  --download-archive ~/yt-liked.txt \
  --limit-rate 5M \
  --sleep-interval 5 --max-sleep-interval 15 \
  "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=LL"

The --download-archive flag appends each downloaded video ID; subsequent runs skip already-archived items [13]. Rate-limiting flags (--limit-rate, --sleep-interval) reduce ban risk for unattended jobs [14].

Watch Later uses the same pattern with ?list=WL.

Note: the partial-items bug [5] means a single run may not fetch all liked videos. Running the command 2–3 times in sequence (archive prevents re-downloads) usually recovers the full list.

YouTube Music liked songs (separate path)

YouTube Music liked songs are a distinct dataset from YouTube liked videos. ytm-yld ⭐ 6 [11] uses OAuth via ytmusicapi — no cookies needed, no IP-ban risk — and syncs the Your Likes playlist with local deletion of removed tracks. The tradeoff: it’s YTMusic-only, not the main YouTube feed.

Cookie refresh strategy

Since cookies expire in ~2 weeks [7] [4], schedule refresh before expiry:

1. Open Firefox, log into YouTube
2. Re-export cookies (browser extension, or manual Netscape export)
3. Re-import into TubeArchivist / overwrite cookies.txt in Pinchflat/Syncify
4. Validate in TubeArchivist settings

Automating this export is theoretically possible via a Firefox profile query script, but cookie misuse risks account bans — manual re-import is the safer cadence [4] [12].