Understanding blob: URLs and YouTube’s youtube-nocookie

When browsing the web or embedding videos, you might encounter URLs like:

blob:https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000

These are browser-side URLs pointing to data in memory and are normal when embedding YouTube videos.

What is a blob: URL?

A blob: URL is a temporary pointer to a file stored in your browser memory. They exist only during your session and are often used for video streaming or dynamically generated content.

Why youtube-nocookie.com?

• It doesn’t store cookies until the user interacts with the video.
• It helps comply with GDPR.
• It reduces tracking.

Example Embed

Takeaways

• blob: URLs are temporary and local to the browser.
• youtube-nocookie.com is privacy-friendly.
• Seeing blob URLs in dev tools is normal.