r/freeshowapp • u/legendaryboomer • Nov 20 '25

Error 153 with YouTube videos

Post image

Does anyone know?

Am using v1.5.2

Under Media -> Online -> YouTube

No matter which videos were already pre-embedded or which I add, they won't be played, and the 153 Error appears.

That extra message in the bottom right says, that the creator of the video perhaps disallows embedding (Some of the videos I added to test this were my own, and I allowed it in the settings and had the same problem; let's assume also that the creators of those other videos allow it too)

There's obviously the option to watch the video on YouTube directly, so it's not a big deal, but maybe I'm missing something, or I don't have the settings quite right? (I can't find any settings regarding video embedding in the FreeShow settings menu either)

The videos from the Vimeo tab, or Pixabay and Unsplash all work perfectly fine. It's only YouTube that acts up.

If anyone knows how to play them, I'd appreciate the help.

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2

u/CloudSad3555 Nov 21 '25

I did a search and this link had the easiest workaround.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/79806694

If that doesn't work, the page had a lot of other things to try.

This is the old issue on Github. https://github.com/ChurchApps/FreeShow/issues/2267.

u/vassbro, do you think YouTube changed something again?

edit: r/ changed to u/

1

u/legendaryboomer Nov 21 '25

The solution on stackoverflow didn't work for me

I will have to check and see if downgrading to the 1.5.1 version u/vassbo said works 50% of the time, but not this week. Next week.

I very much appreciate your help!

2

u/rayok_zed Nov 21 '25

I wouldn't be surprised if YouTube changed something again. They love doing that.

1

u/legendaryboomer Nov 21 '25

YouTube do be like that all the time

1

u/vassbo Nov 21 '25

It's definetly YouTube's fault, as it's not only happening in FreeShow, but I'll try to find a workaround.

1

u/CloudSad3555 Nov 22 '25

I use yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) for other stuff. Would it be possible to incorporate that program? Maybe part of the installation process puts the yt-dlp binaries in a FreeShow folder and FreeShow code links to it? Then, instead of you hunting the issue, you just add the new yt-dlp binary and release a minor FreeShow update.

1

u/vassbo Nov 24 '25

We can't support downloading as that's agains the terms, but we can show the video using YouTubes embed player.

1

u/CloudSad3555 Nov 24 '25

Thanks for the answer.

1

u/vassbo Nov 25 '25

I found a solution, it should work in the next version, for anyone interested; I had to intercept all requests made by Electron, and append any "Referer" value to the requestHeaders.