NIghtbot does not join Live Chat (YouTube)

Any updates on the issue? We have tried all steps from the Troubleshooting Guide (including enabling all default commands), but Nightbot still does not join chat...

Thank you!

Hey @Scarlet Bee!

If you read the troubleshooting guide, you must have noticed this sentence:

You may need to restart your stream if you operate a 24/7 stream.

Have you tried doing that?

Our stream is live 24/7/365. Restarting the stream every day just to get the chat bot back is not something that we can do. That would be most unappealing to our audience.

Just to clarify: are you suggesting that Nightbot cannot be run in 24/7 live streams with scheduled live chats?

The issue isn't coming from Nightbot, but YouTube's limitations, so you'll have the same issue with every other cloud bot.

Here's basically how it works on YouTube (if I understood properly):
Nightbot can't sit in chat all the time because the Live chat doesn't exists unless there's a live stream happening.
When you start a stream, YouTube sends a "message" to Nightbot saying that your stream started, so Nightbot knows it's live and joins. To be noted that YouTube specifically designed this tool at the request of the bots developers because otherwise there would be no way to have a cloud bot in you chat, and it's very buggy.
Then, after some time, YouTube terminates the bot's connection, so Nightbot thinks your stream is offline, except that YouTube won't send that "message" to tell the bot the stream is (still) live again, since it only does at the beginning of the stream. That's why restarting the stream is the only way to keep a cloud bot in chat 24/7/365.

If you need someone to blame, blame YouTube for their poorly designed API.

I am not trying to blame anyone, but trying to understand how it works.

We used to be able to flip our chat off and on and Nightbot stayed in chat. Did something happen recently?

Edit: Additionally, I follow a number of other YouTube channels that do the same thing: run 24/7/365 live streams with limited chat hours. I see that they are able to flip their live chats off/on and keep the bot running in chat. Something does not add up?

Nightbot is quite simple in how it operates. So long as you've joined Nightbot to your chat via our website, it will check with YouTube for live chats to join. We simply tell them the channel ids, and they tell us the live chats we should be in. We don't control what chats Nightbot is in.

If Nightbot is "not joining" it's usually because your live chat is not in that list. There are delays in being returned in this list, and it can take up to 5 minutes to show in the list after going live. For long running streams, there exists situations where you disappear and never return to the list again without restarting the stream. Unfortunately getting YouTube to spend the time debugging this issue is not something we can do.

If you have a stream currently in operation where Nightbot is missing, please post the YouTube channel id and the YouTube video id and we can query against the live chat list to verify if it is missing. If you can keep it in that state long enough, we may be able to ask YouTube to look into it as well (would need to be 2days+).

Thank you for your response!
Channel ID: UCsFgbVuhRrPV5FqyN7kOD8g
Video ID: jWEgPKI3TtI

The live stream has been up since 2020-09-26. We have been able to open/close chat without losing Nightbot in the past.

Appreciate your assistance

Indeed, YouTube is not returning the chat to us:

{
  "kind": "youtube#redacted",
  "etag": "MOff3Jtjh8EI15eL5crqkAzueVQ",
  "pageInfo": {
    "resultsPerPage": 0
  },
  "items": []
}

I will reach out with your channel id + video id to their team, but please leave everything as-is for now.