Do I need to be logged in with a Google account for it to work?
I always, since decades I want to say, ran into troubles whenever I download Youtube vids (no matter which tool I use, yt-dlp or other). It works, then doesn't anymore.
Are you simply, reliably, downloading Youtube vids? How? From a VM? From a container? From your main machine while being logged on?
P.S: congrats to the guys at Google, you sure made that hard