YouTube says issue ‘resolved’ after more than a quarter million users report problems accessing website and app

YouTube has announced that all of its platforms are “are back to normal” after more than a quarter million users reported issues accessing the social media site.

Around 350,000 users reported issues accessing YouTube on Tuesday evening from 8 p.m. Eastern time, according to the unofficial, crowd-sourced site Downdetector. The most commonly reported problem was users saying they had issues using the YouTube app.

By around 10 p.m., YouTube confirmed the “issue has been fixed” across its platforms.

“The issue with our recommendations system has been resolved and all of our platforms (YouTube.com, the YouTube app, YouTube Music, Kids, and TV) are back to normal! We really appreciate you bearing with us while we sorted this out,” a statement on the YouTube help page reads.

Before the fix was announced, YouTube said it was working to resolve a “small number of reports that some people are unable to login to YouTube TV.”

“This is related to the broader issue across YouTube, and we're also working on a fix here,” YouTube said.

YouTube initially confirmed the outage in a post on X: “If you’re having trouble accessing YouTube right now, you’re not alone.” Earlier Tuesday, the video service’s homepage returned an error message when an Independent reporter tried to use it, though individual videos appeared to still be loading and playing properly.

“Looks like YouTube isn’t working properly,” Indiana-based journalist Hannah Adamson wrote on X. “I can still access saved and recently viewed videos, but nothing on the home page loads. Seeing a lot of people on X saying YouTube isn’t working for them either.”

The issues on YouTube quickly inspired jokes online.

A YouTube gaming creator ParrotMode wrote on X that YouTubers were now “writing 45 minute scripts about The Great YouTube Outage of 2026.”