Bug 470794

Summary:	Packaged version of PlasmaTube depends on outdated and broken version of yt-dlp
Product:	[KDE Neon] neon	Reporter:	bmhieserich
Component:	Packages User Edition	Assignee:	Neon Bugs <neon-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED WAITINGFORINFO
Severity:	normal	CC:	ghisvail, jr, neon-bugs-null, sitter
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Neon
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description bmhieserich 2023-06-08 15:35:01 UTC

SUMMARY

I just switched over to KDE Neon last week and I like using the KDE Gear suite of applications on my distros. However, I noticed that the PlasmaTube packaged in Neon's repo is using a version of youtube-dl/yt-dlp (2022.04.08-1) that no longer works because of changes to YouTube itself. These YouTube changes have been accounted for in later releases of yt-dlp, so other apps that depend on later versions of it still work. However, even if I try installing the latest version of yt-dlp from GitHub, PlasmaTube is stuck specifically depending on this earlier version that no longer works. This was tested by uninstalling PlasmaTube and its version of yt-dlp, installing the latest yt-dlp, then reinstalling PlasmaTube, with Discover/apt still pulling in the old yt-dlp version. I know I can install the flatpak but I would like to be able to use the one straight from the repo since it is a KDE Gear app and I would like the updates whenever KDE releases them to the Neon repo.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Install PlasmaTube from the KDE Neon repo
2. Open from launcher or in terminal
3. Attempt to play a YouTube video

OBSERVED RESULT
The video does not play and it sits on a black screen.

EXPECTED RESULT
The requested video plays.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma: KDE Neon 5.27
(available in About System)
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.106.0
Qt Version: 5.15.9

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Here is what the terminal presents when trying to watch a video on the currently packaged version of PlasmaTube:

[ytdl_hook] ERROR: [youtube] OFvXuyITwBI: Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U
[ytdl_hook] youtube-dl failed: unexpected error occurred
No protocol handler found to open URL ytdl://OFvXuyITwBI
The protocol is either unsupported, or was disabled at compile-time.
[ytdl_hook] ERROR: [youtube] OFvXuyITwBI: Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U
[ytdl_hook] youtube-dl failed: unexpected error occurred

The yt-dlp -U command mentioned in the error code from the terminal does not work with version 2022.04.08-1. As I mentioned, the Flatpak version of PlasmaTube and at least the version packaged with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed use a more up-to-date version of yt-dlp.

Comment 1 Ghislain Vaillant 2024-03-18 07:12:46 UTC

Confirmed on KDE Neon 6.0. Fails with same error with the native package, runs fine with Flatpak.

A suggestion from a thread in KDE Discuss was to install yt-dlp under `$HOME/.local/bin`, which should take precedence over the packaged version thanks to the `$PATH` override. It is still not ideal from a user's perspective.

It begs the question whether it makes sense to provide an up-to-date plasmatube package in Neon without regular updates to yt-dlp too.

Comment 2 Jonathan Riddell 2024-03-27 16:48:27 UTC

There's a general KDE issue here too, why does it not specify the version of yt-dlp needed at build time etc..

Comment 3 Ghislain Vaillant 2024-04-01 10:45:20 UTC

(In reply to Jonathan Riddell from comment #2)
> There's a general KDE issue here too, why does it not specify the version of
> yt-dlp needed at build time etc..

I believe the issue is that yt-dlp just keeps playing catch-up with whatever breaking changes in the Youtube API, so you should be expecting to always be using its latest version at any point in the future. That's very much incompatible with the standard way of packaging in Debian or Ubuntu, whereby the underlying package version is frozen.

As an alternative, I wonder whether the KDE neon user repository could provide its own updates to the yt-dlp package, instead of relying on the Ubuntu one?

Comment 4 Carlos De Maine 2025-09-20 09:36:07 UTC

Thank you for your bug report! 
However this bug report was created/provided previous to 01/01/2023 and also has not received any updates since  before 01/01/2025. 
Unfortunately KDE neon no longer provides updates for anything older than noble 24.04 based edition's.
Please upgrade to KDE neon noble and if you can reproduce the issue after upgrading to an active version, feel free to re-open this bug report.
Thanks for understanding!