Fix YouTube error 153 by Letme · Pull Request #217 · jazzband/django-embed-video

Letme · 2025-10-30T23:19:03Z

I got YouTube error 153 on my embedded players that went away after I added referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" to the template of embed video. This was suggested in few StackOverflow questions and it is based on https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/required-minimum-functionality#embedded-player-api-client-identity

I got YouTube error 153 on my embedded players that went away after I added `referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"` to the template of embed video. This was suggested in few StackOverflow questions and it is based on https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/required-minimum-functionality#embedded-player-api-client-identity

citizenfish

I've tested this and it works well

aleksihakli · 2026-02-03T12:19:35Z

Hey @Letme, could you fix the unit tests so we can get this merged?

Letme · 2026-02-03T13:50:11Z

Hey @Letme, could you fix the unit tests so we can get this merged?

Sure. I hope CI will now work as I push this (was working with WebIDE).

Letme · 2026-02-03T14:01:08Z

@aleksihakli I pushed the changes. Locally tox ran fine.

mgrdcm

Just have questions about whether this is also needed for Vimeo?

mgrdcm · 2026-02-06T17:16:13Z

embed_video/tests/templatetags/tests_embed_video_tags.py

            '<iframe width="80%" height="30%" '
            'src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/72304002" '
-            'loading="lazy" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>',
+            'loading="lazy" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"></iframe>',


Is this needed for Vimeo too?

I did not find any information for it. Should this be a blocker?

I just mean that I think this test should probably fail because it's checking for the referrer policy for Vimeo and not for YouTube.

I found similar thing at Vimeo, so I am a bit more certain this can help it: https://help.vimeo.com/hc/en-us/articles/35817429341457-Troubleshooting-video-playback-errors-due-to-referrer-policy-conflicts

mgrdcm · 2026-02-06T17:16:20Z

embed_video/tests/templatetags/tests_embed_video_tags.py

            '<iframe width="80%" height="300" '
            'src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/72304002" '
-            'loading="lazy" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>',
+            'loading="lazy" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"></iframe>',


Is this needed for Vimeo too?

mgrdcm

This new referrerpolicy is getting added for all backends rather than just YouTube, which I don't think is the intention or desirable. It should be possible to add it in a way that it only applies to YouTube, happy to help with that!

mgrdcm · 2026-02-07T16:52:24Z

embed_video/templates/embed_video/embed_code.html

@@ -1 +1 @@
-<iframe width="{{ width }}" height="{{ height }}" src="{{ backend.url }}" loading="lazy" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
+<iframe width="{{ width }}" height="{{ height }}" src="{{ backend.url }}" loading="lazy" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"></iframe>


This is getting added for all backends rather than just YouTube, which I don't think is the intention or desirable.

For instance could add a variable to the default embed_code.html and the YouTube backend either uses a template that inherits from that one, or maybe just the code for the YT backend fills in that variable.

Can you explain me why this would not be good for Vimeo? What would break by explicitly defining it?

Can I ping on this as a decision? Because if you want me to put a backend around then fine, but I need the changes from official release, as now I have to manually fix the template post installation.

@Letme Hello! Sorry to be a holdup on this, and thanks to you and @aleksihakli for the feedback and patience.

My worry was that it would be leaking more information to the host of the video than before, but now I'm not quite sure. According to W3C no-referrer-when-downgrade is the default, while MDN says it's no-referrer-when-downgrade. Looks like Chrome changed defaults from the former to the latter many years ago and so I'm guessing at least some other browsers have as well.

So it looks like this isn't even much of a change in most cases, which makes me wonder why it works/is necessary, but I don't see a reason to hold it up anymore at least.

Thanks for this change @Letme!

aleksihakli · 2026-02-09T08:42:20Z

Does this have the potential to introduce any unwanted side-effects?

I'd see this as a purely improvement unless it degrades something or I'm missing something - this simply disables the sending of the Referer policy when the origin domain changes, so the video sites do not get the embedding site URL?

Maybe this could be included with a flag that would default to True, so users could disable the property and send the header if they so desire?

What do you think @mgrdcm?

codecov · 2026-02-16T20:31:35Z

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 99.10%. Comparing base (b9e6997) to head (0d2c4a4).
⚠️ Report is 1 commits behind head on master.

Additional details and impacted files

@@           Coverage Diff           @@
##           master     #217   +/-   ##
=======================================
  Coverage   99.10%   99.10%           
=======================================
  Files          16       16           
  Lines         671      671           
  Branches       40       40           
=======================================
  Hits          665      665           
  Misses          4        4           
  Partials        2        2

☔ View full report in Codecov by Sentry.
📢 Have feedback on the report? Share it here.

🚀 New features to boost your workflow:

❄️ Test Analytics: Detect flaky tests, report on failures, and find test suite problems.

Letme · 2026-02-17T22:23:51Z

Thanks for merging. Please also make a release so that we can install the fix via pypi.

benzkji mentioned this pull request Jan 7, 2026

Fix Error 153 on YouTube videos #218

Open

citizenfish approved these changes Jan 9, 2026

View reviewed changes

Merge branch 'master' into patch-1

662bbc0

Ensure that asserts include the referrerpolicy

01aa186

mgrdcm self-requested a review February 6, 2026 17:15

mgrdcm reviewed Feb 6, 2026

View reviewed changes

mgrdcm requested changes Feb 7, 2026

View reviewed changes

mgrdcm self-requested a review February 16, 2026 20:27

mgrdcm approved these changes Feb 16, 2026

View reviewed changes

mgrdcm requested a review from aleksihakli February 16, 2026 20:28

Merge branch 'master' into patch-1

0d2c4a4

mgrdcm merged commit 07acd44 into jazzband:master Feb 17, 2026
24 checks passed

		@@ -1 +1 @@
		<iframe width="{{ width }}" height="{{ height }}" src="{{ backend.url }}" loading="lazy" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
		<iframe width="{{ width }}" height="{{ height }}" src="{{ backend.url }}" loading="lazy" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"></iframe>

Conversation

Letme commented Oct 30, 2025

Uh oh!

citizenfish left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

aleksihakli commented Feb 3, 2026

Uh oh!

Letme commented Feb 3, 2026

Uh oh!

Letme commented Feb 3, 2026

Uh oh!

mgrdcm left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

mgrdcm left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Letme Feb 8, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Letme Feb 16, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

aleksihakli commented Feb 9, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

codecov bot commented Feb 16, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Codecov Report

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Letme commented Feb 17, 2026

Uh oh!

Reviewers

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Development

Uh oh!

4 participants

Comments

Letme Feb 8, 2026 •

edited

Loading

Letme Feb 16, 2026 •

edited

Loading

aleksihakli commented Feb 9, 2026 •

edited

Loading

codecov bot commented Feb 16, 2026 •

edited

Loading