changing basic user-agent

[BasicsBasic]

Niconico put in place access restrictions to lots of videos since ahead of this year. Turns out, a simple user-agent spoofing can detour this restriction, which is changing user-agent to "Googlebot". Is it possible to change the user agent of searcher or querying code (I'm not expert on this field, sorry) of make option so one can change it by one's own hand?

reference : https://mmaker.moe/2025/01/niconico-geo-block-user-agent-spoofing/

FYI, I signed up to github for just suggesting this feature, thanks

[InfinityLoop1308]

Thanks for your suggestion. I just checked the article but it seems NicoNico had implemented full geoblocking that can't bypass by only modifying the user agent. I checked Googlebot/2.1 as suggested but still got blocked.

If you have further findings please feel free to reply here.

[BasicsBasic]

To watch 'Sensitive' videos on Niconico, not only bypassing the geoblocking but also turning on the 'allow sensitive videos' option on account setting is needed.

I just tested changing user-agent method [by setting user-agent as 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)'] and the below is my result.
If I try to get the content of the video without login or changing user-agent, it gives "errorCode":"FORBIDDEN","reasonCode":"HIGH_RISK_COUNTRY_VIDEO".
If I try the same thing with Googlebot/2.1 but still without login, it gives "errorCode":"FORBIDDEN","reasonCode":"HARMFUL_VIDEO", which has different reasonCode.
Finally, If I try with Googlebot/2.1 user-agent while login (used cookies), it gives a nice embeded video https://embed.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm44792988?autoplay=1 (example from #940).

I saw the feature for logging into niconico is in pipepipe's setting already, so spoofing user-agent might go well as long as the user do the login and change the setting by themselves.

[InfinityLoop1308]

Yeah you are right. I have done the change and now logged users are able to bypass the geo blocking for sensitive videos.
Sadly animes can't be accessed via this method.

Test apk can be find in the latest CI.