# Browser Authentication Setup

This guide will help you extract the necessary authentication cookies from your browser to use with `ytmusicapi`.

## Step 1: Open YouTube Music

1. Open your browser (Chrome or Firefox)
2. Navigate to [https://music.youtube.com](https://music.youtube.com)
3. **Make sure you are logged in** to your Google account

## Step 2: Open Developer Tools

- **Chrome/Edge:** Press `F12` or `Ctrl+Shift+I` (Windows/Linux) / `Cmd+Option+I` (Mac)
- **Firefox:** Press `F12` or `Ctrl+Shift+I` (Windows/Linux) / `Cmd+Option+I` (Mac)

## Step 3: Go to Network Tab

1. Click on the **"Network"** tab in Developer Tools
2. If you don't see it, look for it in the tabs at the top of the developer tools panel

## Step 4: Capture Network Requests

1. **Refresh the page** (press `F5` or `Ctrl+R` / `Cmd+R`)
2. Wait for the page to load completely
3. Look for requests to `music.youtube.com` in the network list

## Step 5: Find the Right Request

1. Click on any request that goes to `music.youtube.com`
2. Look for requests like:
   - `browse`
   - `getBrowse`
   - `search`
   - Or any request that shows `music.youtube.com` in the URL

## Step 6: Copy Headers

1. With a request selected, click on the **"Headers"** tab
2. Scroll down to **"Request Headers"** section
3. You need to copy the following headers:

### Required Headers:

- **Cookie** - A long string starting with something like `VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=...`
- **User-Agent** - Something like `Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)...`

### Optional but Recommended:

- **X-Goog-AuthUser** - Usually `0` or `1`
- **Accept** - Usually `*/*` or `application/json`
- **Accept-Language** - Your language preference
- **Content-Type** - Usually `application/json`
- **x-origin** - Usually `https://music.youtube.com`

## Step 7: Create browser.json

Create a file named `browser.json` in this directory with the following structure:

```json
{
    "User-Agent": "PASTE_YOUR_USER_AGENT_HERE",
    "Accept": "*/*",
    "Accept-Language": "en-US,en;q=0.9",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "X-Goog-AuthUser": "0",
    "x-origin": "https://music.youtube.com",
    "Cookie": "PASTE_YOUR_COOKIE_HERE"
}
```

Replace:
- `PASTE_YOUR_USER_AGENT_HERE` with the User-Agent header value you copied
- `PASTE_YOUR_COOKIE_HERE` with the Cookie header value you copied

**Important:** The Cookie value is very long and contains sensitive information. Keep this file private and never commit it to version control.

## Step 8: Verify

Your `browser.json` should look something like this (with your actual values):

```json
{
    "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
    "Accept": "*/*",
    "Accept-Language": "en-US,en;q=0.9",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "X-Goog-AuthUser": "0",
    "x-origin": "https://music.youtube.com",
    "Cookie": "VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=abc123...; YSC=xyz789...; [many more cookie values]"
}
```

## Troubleshooting

- **Can't find the Cookie header?** Make sure you're looking at a request to `music.youtube.com`, not `youtube.com`
- **Authentication fails?** Your cookies may have expired. Repeat the process to get fresh cookies
- **Still having issues?** Try using a different request from the network tab, or refresh the page and try again

## Security Note

The `browser.json` file contains your authentication cookies. Anyone with access to this file can access your YouTube Music account. Keep it secure and never share it publicly.