Hi everyone,

I'm trying to download the YouTube Premium Enhanced Bitrate (1080p Premium) stream using the latest yt-dlp nightly, but I'm stuck.

My setup

• Windows 11
• yt-dlp nightly: 2026.07.04.221833
• Node.js: v24.16.0
• FFmpeg installed and detected
• yt_dlp_ejs installed
• YouTube Premium subscription

Node/EJS is working

Without Node I only got Android formats.

After running:

.\yt-dlp.exe --js-runtimes node -F "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Op8U_wy4fs"

yt-dlp detects Node correctly and solves the JS challenge.

The format list now includes the Premium HLS stream:

96 mp4 1920x1080 ~504.77MiB 4689k m3u8 avc1.640028 mp4a.40.2 [hi]

Problem

If I immediately run:

.\yt-dlp.exe --js-runtimes node -f 96 "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Op8U_wy4fs"

I get:

ERROR: [youtube] Requested format is not available.
Use --list-formats for a list of available formats.

The strange part is that format 96 was listed just seconds earlier.

Things I've already tried

• Latest nightly build
• Stable build
• Node.js
• FFmpeg
• EJS
• Cookies from Premium account
• No cookies
• --remote-components "ejs:github"
• --extractor-args "youtube:player_client=default,ios"
• --extractor-args "youtube:player_client=android"
• --extractor-args "youtube:player_client=android_vr"
• best[protocol=m3u8]
• best*[protocol=m3u8]
• best[height=1080][protocol=m3u8]

Everything either returns:

Requested format is not available

or downloads the normal 1080p stream instead of the Premium enhanced bitrate.

Debug log

The debug log shows:

Detected experiment to bind GVS PO Token to video ID for web_safari client

Some web_safari client https formats have been skipped as they are missing a URL.
YouTube is forcing SABR streaming.

It also shows:

Downloading m3u8 information

and format 96 is still listed.

My question

Is this a recent YouTube change related to SABR / PO Tokens, where yt-dlp can list the Premium HLS stream but cannot actually download it?

Or is there another extractor/client combination that still works for downloading the actual Enhanced Bitrate stream?

Has anyone successfully downloaded the true 1080p Premium Enhanced Bitrate stream recently?

Thanks