YouTube experienced a widespread outage Tuesday evening in the United States and internationally, with users reporting blank homepages and error messages across YouTube, YouTube Music, YouTube Kids and YouTube TV, before the company said it had implemented a fix.
The video-sharing titan attributed the disruption to a problem with its recommendations system, according to a support update and company statements.
Why It Matters
The outage interrupted evening viewing for large numbers of users across major U.S. cities and other countries, affecting access to news, sports and entertainment during prime-time hours.
Third-party tracker Downdetector registered spikes in reports in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, the U.K. and Germany.
YouTube is the largest ad-supported video platform in the U.S., and outages can ripple across creators, advertisers and live events, including viewers using YouTube TV for programming.
What To Know
User reports surged around 7:50 p.m. ET Tuesday, with clusters in New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Phoenix, according to outage maps and timelines cited by multiple outlets tracking Downdetector data.
During the disruption, the YouTube website often loaded a homepage shell with no videos, while mobile apps displayed a “Something went wrong” error screen, according to the outlets.
Downdetector tallies cited by the news sources showed hundreds of thousands of reports in the U.S. and additional ones globally at peak.
CNET reported 837,973 U.S. reports and total global reports of about 1.69 million across several countries about 5:45 p.m. PT, while NBC Chicago reported more than 355,000 by 7:18 p.m. CT.
Roughly an hour after issues escalated, YouTube said it was investigating and directed users to its support thread for updates, before later reporting that service had been restored.
YouTube said that “an issue with our recommendations system prevented videos from appearing across surfaces on YouTube (including the homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music and YouTube Kids),” adding that it is working toward a full fix after restoring the homepage for many users.
What People Are Saying
TeamYouTube, in a statement on X Tuesday night: “If you’re having trouble accessing YouTube right now, you’re not alone — our teams are looking into this and will follow up here with updates.”
What Happens Next
YouTube said it had restored service and continued work toward a full fix as reports tapered off, including addressing residual login issues for a small number of YouTube TV users, according to company updates and media reports.
Users who still encounter problems can check the YouTube Community thread for ongoing status updates and guidance.
