If you use a tool like yt-dl or yt-dlp to download YouTube videos and face throttling by YouTube, I’ve found that playing the video in the browser before download speeds up the video considerably.

In my case, my downloads were 50-60 KB/s. After trying this, the videos download at 25 MB/s or more.

My theory is that YouTube detects whether there’s an active session and limits download speeds. With a browser session in progress, throttling is lifted, and you can download at maximum speeds.

Give it a try!