ytc-bridge

Acts as a bridge to enable requests to YouTube's internal APIs, bypassing CORS and other restrictions.

Installation

To install this extension, you need to load it as an unpacked extension in a Chromium-based browser.

1. Download the latest ytc-bridge-vX.X.X.zip from the releases page.
2. Unzip the downloaded file.
3. Open your browser and navigate to the extensions page (e.g., chrome://extensions or edge://extensions).
4. Enable "Developer mode".
5. Click on "Load unpacked" and select the directory where you unzipped the files.

Building from Source

If you want to build the extension from the source code, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/LuanRT/ytc-bridge.git
   cd ytc-bridge

2. Install the dependencies:

   npm install

3. Build the project:

   npm run build

   This will create a dist directory containing the bundled extension files.

4. Follow the steps in the Installation section, but select the root directory of the project instead of the unzipped release folder.

How It Works

The extension consists of three main parts:

1. Injected Script (src/injected.ts): This script is injected into the web page and exposes a window.proxyFetch function. Web applications can use this function as a replacement for the standard fetch API to proxy requests through the extension.
2. Content Script (src/content.ts): This script acts as a message-passing bridge between the injected script (running in the web page's context) and the background script (running in the extension's context).
3. Background Script (src/background.ts): This is the core of the extension. It listens for messages from the content script, performs the actual fetch requests, and dynamically adds and removes network request rules to modify headers, ensuring the requests are accepted by YouTube's servers.

The extension also uses declarative network request rules defined in rules.json to modify headers for certain requests, which helps in bypassing origin and referer checks.

License

Distributed under the MIT License.

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