This can be a frustrating thing when trying to watch YouTube videos with more adult-themed content. Sometimes YouTube may have restricted access to them because it considers the content in them inappropriate for younger viewers.

When you try to watch these videos, playback is blocked and you get a screen like this:

You then need to sign in, and in most countries, also provide some kind of ID to prove your age. Understandably, a lot of people don’t want to have to do this, even if they are of the correct age to watch these videos. Are there any ways to get around these age restrictions and watch these videos WITHOUT needing to sign and complete these age verification checks with YouTube?

Researching this topic myself was frustrating, because there are lots of articles on this topic that contain out of date solutions that may have worked a few years ago, but no longer work in accessing age restricted YouTube videos. You’ll find yourself ploughing through all these different “solutions”, but none of them work any more, so it’s wasting your time.

Therefore in this article, I want to “cut the fat off” some of the currently ranking content for this search query, giving you ONLY the methods that you can pretty reliably be sure WILL work when you try them, so you’re not wasting several hours like I did trying out of date methods that no longer work in bypassing YouTube age restriction video blocks.

Let’s get started right away with working, up to date solutions for bypassing YouTube age restrictions blocks, cutting out all the redundant or unreliable ones.

Working Solution #1 – Create a New USA 18+ YouTube Account

This is the one path where you can still go through the official channels on YouTube – you just to create an over 18 account on YouTube, but make sure you are based in the USA, or using a VPN with a USA IP address. Newly created YouTube accounts in the USA don’t require ID verification – you just need to create the account and set the age to adult/18+ to allow access to all videos.

Here’s what you need for this:

• A new email address not currently linked to another Gmail/YouTube account
• A VPN if you’re not already based in the USA
• A phone number to confirm your new account if asked.

For VPNs, there are several good free ones that will offer an American IP address. ProtonVPN and TurboVPN are two good free options that give unlimited use that you’ll need for lots of YouTube streaming.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. If you’re not already based in the USA, sign up to a free unlimited VPN (ProtonVPN is recommended) and select an American server.
2. Create a totally new email address (Gmail, Protonmail are good providers).
3. Create a new YouTube account here.
4. Set the age of the account to adult/18+. This usually means putting in a date of birth that makes you the right age when creating the account. If you’re already an adult anyway, this is not a problem – just use your real date of birth.
5. After account creation, you may need to input a phone number to receive a verification code to confirm the account. If you don’t want to have to do this, see Solution #2 below.
6. Adult YouTube accounts created in the USA should allow playback of all videos, even age restricted ones, without the need for any ID verification.

Accounts created in other countries are more strict and require ID verification to access age restricted videos, so make sure you are using an American IP address when trying this solution.

You may also need to go into the Settings of the YouTube app if on a portable device and toggle on/off all Restrictions settings as appropriate, to make sure all videos are accessible on that account.

Working Solution #2 – Use The FreeTube Tool

After a couple of hours of trying suggestions that no longer worked, this is finally how I was able to play an age restricted YouTube video. I just wish I had known this first before spending ages trying other methods that don’t work, so that’s why I putting this one right near the top of my article – it still works, and it’s free, easy and quick!

FreeTube is a totally free streaming app that can do a lot of things with YouTube videos, including downloading age restricted videos off the platform to watch.

 

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Download  and install Free Tube for free here and install on your device.
2. Copy the URL of the blocked YouTube video
3. Paste into the Stream feature of the tool.
4. The video should play, even if it’s age restricted.
5. If it doesn’t play, find the video on your Dashboard, click on the 3 dots icon and select “Open Invidious Link” (see also Solution #3 below).

Therefore this is still a working method to circumvent YouTube age restriction blocks on videos for free. If video playback slows down or buffers, you can also adjust the video quality in the bottom right corner.

There is nominally a feature to also download streamed videos to your device using the FreeTube app, but this actually didn’t work when I tried it. But at least it’s still a valid, working method to stream age restricted blocked YouTube videos, which was good enough for me after all the time spent trying things which don’t work anymore.

Working Method #3 – Use Invidious Video Site

This is really a follow on the FreeTube option above, since it’s an feature available within their app to open pasted in videos in Invidious if the normal stream doesn’t work.

Invidious is a streaming site that can pull videos off YouTube to watch, and it still works as of the time of writing in watching age restricted movies.

You just need to modify the YouTube video link:

1. Open up the age restricted YouTube video you want to watch in one tab
2. Open up https://invidious.nerdvpn.de in another tab
3. Copy everything in the original YouTube video link after youtube.com (eg. /watch?v=…….). There’s always the /watch?v= and then a string of random characters. Copy it all, including the slash after .com
4. Paste this suffix in at the end of your invidious.nerdvpn.de link and press Enter.
5. The restricted video should load and play.
6. If the invidious link above doesn’t work, go into your FreeTube player Dashboard, paste in the URL or find the video you want, click on the 3 dots icon next to it and click on “Open Invidious Link“. They change their links a lot to make sure they still work.
7. There’s also an option to Switch Invidious Instance within the interface, which loads all other links to that video through different proxies. Keep trying all of the different links, and eventually you will find one that works.

This is a great little option, and one of the only sites that still works in streaming YouTube videos, even restricted ones.

Sometimes the video doesn’t load in very good quality at first – it’ll sometimes improve if you wait several seconds, or else change the video resolution quality in the bottom right corner.

Methods That No Longer Work For Bypassing Age Restricted Videos

As I mentioned earlier, researching this topic myself last night was frustrating, with all the top ranking articles for this problem containing out of date solutions to this problem that no longer work for bypassing age-restricted YouTube videos. Bypassing YouTube restrictions of various kinds is a bit of a cat and mouse game, with people finding ways to get around these restrictions, but then YouTube closing these avenues off when they discover them.

Here is a quick rundown of commonly cited methods to watch YouTube age restricted videos without signing in that no longer work, or rarely work:

Method #1 – Change YouTube Settings on iPhone/Android App – It’s often said in articles on this that if you’re using the app version of YouTube on either iPhone or an Android device, you can simply go into the Settings menu of your YouTube app on there, and toggle on/off the relevant settings on Age Restriction/Restricted Content (or toggle Restricted Mode off as in some guides), so that these types of restricted videos are allowed or not blocked. But I tried this on my Android smartphone last night, and it didn’t work – restricted videos were still restricted even when I found any and all Restriction settings and toggled them on/off as needed. See here for an article that covers these methods, but they didn’t work for me at least.

Method #2 – Changing YouTube URL/link – Another method that used to work, but no longer seems to, is to copy and paste the URL (link) of the blocked YouTube video, but alter the URL so it goes through a filter site that allows you to play the video without it being restricted. Some option for this are to put “nsfw” in front of or after youtube in the URL, or change edit the link to remove the “watch?v=” section and replace it with “embed/” instead. None of these methods worked when I tried them – the videos were still blocked.

Method #3 – Play the video through listenonrepeat.com – Another YouTube video playback site that you used to be able to copy and paste the video link into, or search for it, and play it without the Age Restriction block. But no longer worked when I tried it. repeatyoutube.com and YouTubeRepeater also didn’t work.

Method #4 – Pulling video off YouTube with free/paid tools – Another commonly cited solution is to pull the video off YouTube with a free or paid YouTube video downloader tool, allowing you to watch it without any restrictions. But again, while these tools sometimes still work for pulling unrestricted videos off YouTube, they no longer seem to work for downloading age restricted videos off the platform. I tried several of them, including getvideo.org, 4K Video Downloader, keepvid.com, 320ytmp3.com, y2mate and YT1s.com, but none of them worked – you usually get some kind of error message when trying to download age restricted videos.

Ace Thinker Video Keeper may still work but is not free – you need to pay to use. The New Pipe App For Android may also work but I’m not sure as haven’t had chance to test.

Method #5 – Use A Proxy Site – Another solution that’s towards the end of many suggestions lists of watching these videos, but again it didn’t work when I tried it using proxysite.com. I just got a “your browser is out of date” alert, when it wasn’t, plus I tried several different browsers with the same result. Plus, proxy sites aren’t the best thing to use anyway, even if you could get it to work. Speeds are often slow and unreliable for YouTube streaming, plus you don’t know where your data is really going with proxy services. They may occasionally work, but you can’t really call proxy sites a reliable solution any more for watching age restricted YouTube videos.

See here, here and here for illustrated guides covering all these solutions, but they seem to be unreliable or redundant as of now, so my preferred solutions are the two ones I provided at the top.