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The workaround is to not use the software you don't like.
Use yt-dlp, it gets the job done without any ads, donations, cookie banners etc.
The workaround is to not use the software you don't like
I did like it though until now...
Thanks for the suggestion I'll try it!
yt-dlp is the best tool out there, and you can find plenty of GUI for it out there, for free. Don't use bullshit extensions like this one.
Any extensions that can somehow run yt-dlp?
yt-dlp or nothing
This is the way.
Anything that uses youtube-dlp, so this one for example: https://github.com/StefanLobbenmeier/youtube-dl-gui
Better too because it's not running as a browser extension.
Yeah, that extension is ok, but the video quality of it sucks.
Use jdownloader2 or yt-dlg
You can use The Stream Detector for HLS which can then be used to download via a program such as ffmpeg
Does this work on any site? e.g. Pornhub?
I haven't used this extension before but it seems like what it does is find the URLs of active videos. You can do the same manually by F9(or right click > inspect) > Network > Media > Sort by size (larger files will probably be video). This will give you the URL of the video (same as if you right clicked and chose "open video in new tab", but some sites disable this).
This approach usually works for me, but many sites take steps to prevent it.
Send several smaller video files. They basically cut it up into short videos so you can't access the whole thing at once. ffmpeg or a download manager (I use TurboDownloadManager) should be able to combine them relatively easily. Until recently, YouTube used this sort of method. The URL had a "range" tag that specified which frames of the video to show. Deleting this tag gave the whole video. They've since changed it and I don't know any similar tricks (just use yt-dlp for YouTube). Other sites may do something similar, like changing a number or keyword in the URL will get you the whole video.
Serve a preview of a full video (that you have to pay for). Many sites have very similar URLs for free and paid videos. On some sites you might be able to guess what you need to change to get the full video. Some sites have their previews named "preview.mp4" whee the full vudeo is the same URL but named "video.mp4" or something like that. You can spend some time messing around if you find something like this, but really the chances of guessing correctly are pretty low.
Encrypted keys. This is basically impossible to crack. Some URLs will have long strings of letters and numbers in them. I assume this is some sort of encrypted password that needs to match up for you to access the video. Don't even try with these ones.
TL;DR usually it'll work. Sometimes it won't but you might be able to get around it.
Also, yt-dlp works on much more than just YouTube. If I can't figure out how to download a video, I'll just give the URL (the webpage, not the direct video URL) to yt-dlp and it'll often work.
Regarding point 1. that's what HLS does. The extension simply generates a simple to use CLI command to request and compile the HLS stream into a normal video file. Simply sniffing out the video source via the network manager is just the first step and most simple step of the process.
I don't know what method it uses for streaming content, if it's HLS I don't see why it wouldn't work.
Firefox allows closed source extensions?
They do.
Surprise!
Although you could do the same thing with Foss.
I'm confused. I've been using this extension for years on desktop without this issue. I think it has an option where you can install a companion conversion app on your machine and bypass the QR code. Am I mistaken?
No this is with the companion app. The QR code doesn't always appear but only with certain video formats that need to be converted. You probably simply haven't tried to download such a video yet.
Jdownloader2 is all you need. Supports lots of websites.