Embedded YouTube videos not playing in Keynote

when running presentation in Keynote 14.4 with Mac OS 26.1 embedded YouTube videos will not play and display error message "error 153 video configuration error) this is on a MacBook Air M1 2020 .

anyone know what steps do I need to take to rectify this?


MacBook Air 13″, macOS 26.1

Posted on Nov 20, 2025 12:52 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 21, 2025 4:02 PM

This is YouTube's way of telling you Keynote doesn't have permission to replay the video.


While anyone can upload a video to YouTube, and that video is available to anyone, there is a tipping point where the video is played back enough that YouTube track it for monetization purposes (ad insertion, playback credits to the author, etc.) In order to do this, YouTube needs to know who you are, which it does via various login/cookie mechanisms.


When the video is played back in Keynote, Keynote is not a logged-in user, and doesn't have your YouTube credentials, so YouTube tell you to kindly go away (via the entirely non-helpful 'error 153' message).


You don't have an option here as far as Youtube is concerned. YouTube are the ones deciding that they won't play the video to the current unknown/unauthenticated client, and Keynote doesn't know how to authenticate to YouTube.


If this is your video, consider storing it locally, within the Keynote presentation, rather than streaming it real-time.

1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 21, 2025 4:02 PM in response to carlke1

This is YouTube's way of telling you Keynote doesn't have permission to replay the video.


While anyone can upload a video to YouTube, and that video is available to anyone, there is a tipping point where the video is played back enough that YouTube track it for monetization purposes (ad insertion, playback credits to the author, etc.) In order to do this, YouTube needs to know who you are, which it does via various login/cookie mechanisms.


When the video is played back in Keynote, Keynote is not a logged-in user, and doesn't have your YouTube credentials, so YouTube tell you to kindly go away (via the entirely non-helpful 'error 153' message).


You don't have an option here as far as Youtube is concerned. YouTube are the ones deciding that they won't play the video to the current unknown/unauthenticated client, and Keynote doesn't know how to authenticate to YouTube.


If this is your video, consider storing it locally, within the Keynote presentation, rather than streaming it real-time.

Embedded YouTube videos not playing in Keynote

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