Session options — just-yt

Most applications should let just-yt create its anonymous session. The options on this page exist for controlled deployments and diagnosis, not as required setup.

Visitor data and PO tokens

const yt = new YouTube({
  visitorData: savedVisitorData,
  poToken: currentPoToken,
});

visitorData is an anonymous session identity. Reusing valid visitor data can make calls more consistent. poToken is a Proof-of-Origin token used on endpoints that check it.

These values do not sign in a user. They do not bypass bot detection, age-gates, private access, member restrictions, or regional restrictions. YouTube can still refuse a request.

Choose how bootstrap behaves

Option	Default	Why you might change it
`generateSessionLocally`	`false`	Skip the remote session bootstrap for faster, less faithful startup.
`failFast`	`false`	Refuse to start when remote session data cannot be retrieved instead of using fallback data.
`retrieveInnertubeConfig`	`true`	Skip fetching the remote Innertube configuration in a specialized environment.

Local generation is useful in a test or network environment where the bootstrap endpoint is known to be unavailable. It does not make requests more authenticated or less subject to access controls.

failFast: true is useful when consistency matters more than availability. A job can stop immediately rather than continue with locally generated session data.