Fixing YouTube Player Error 153 with Referrer Policy Settings

Environment

YouTube video player embedded via iframe in web pages.

Issue

When embedding YouTube videos in a website, the player displays the error “Error 153: Video player configuration error”.  The embedded video may have been fine previously and only broken recently without any changes on the part of the website or the university.

Resolution

To fix the YouTube player error, try the following steps:

  1. Add the attribute referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" to the YouTube iframe tag(s).
  2. If the issue persists, add the following meta tag inside the <head> section of your HTML document, but be aware this may reduce privacy protections:
<meta name="referrer" content="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" />

Additional Information

There have been reports that using the YouTube oembed result might avoid this problem.

For more details and context, see the article: How to Fix YouTube Error 153 Video Player Configuration Error Explained.

Need additional information or assistance? Contact the ITS Service Center.

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