Fix for YouTube iframe “Error 153” — Missing Referer Header

If you’re encountering Error 153 when trying to load a YouTube iframe or embedded player, it’s because YouTube now requires a valid Referer header to identify the embedding client.

According to YouTube’s updated policy, you must include a Referer parameter when making requests to the embedded player.

See the official documentation here:

🔗 YouTube Embedded Player API Client Identity

To fix this, you can explicitly set the Referer header in your request, like so:

..loadRequest(
  Uri.parse("https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoID"),
  headers: {
    // 🔑 These two lines allow YouTube's referer verification to pass
    "Referer": "strict-origin-when-cross-origin",
    // "Origin": "https://www.youtube-nocookie.com",
  },
)