is youtube down — outage disrupted recommendations before service was restored
Users worldwide saw service interruptions on Tuesday evening, Feb. 17, when a platform-wide problem left many homepages blank and videos invisible. The incident began at about 8: 00 p. m. ET and was resolved later the same night; the company traced the disruption to its recommendations system and pushed fixes that restored normal operation.
What failed and why it mattered
The outage primarily affected the recommendation and discovery functions that populate homepages, suggested videos and related views. Many users reported that the site and apps loaded only frame elements such as sidebars and search boxes, but failed to display playable video items on the homepage. Other features touched by the disruption included search and uploads on some surfaces.
Engineers working for the service identified the root cause as an issue with the recommendations system, which prevented videos from appearing across the product family. An initial partial recovery returned homepage content to users by about 9: 26 p. m. ET, and a final notice indicated the problem had been fully resolved by 10: 19 p. m. ET.
Timeline and global reach
The outage began around 8: 00 p. m. ET on Tuesday, Feb. 17. An outage-tracking service logged a wide range of peak volumes as the situation unfolded, with trackers and monitoring tools showing figures that ranged from several hundred thousand to nearly a million user error reports at different points during the evening. The disruption was not confined to a single country — users in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, India, Australia, Brazil and Mexico reported issues from various time zones.
At the height of the incident, many people could still perform searches or access certain parts of the site, but the default homepage and recommendation cards were often empty. Support teams posted updates through official community channels to acknowledge the problem and to advise users that work was underway to restore full functionality.
What users should do now
If you still see problems after the company’s final update, try these steps: restart the app or browser, clear the app cache or the browser cache and cookies, and reboot the device. If issues persist, check the product’s community pages or in-app help for the latest status updates and guidance from support staff. For creators who found uploads stalled during the outage, recheck your upload queue and confirm that any interrupted uploads completed successfully after the fix.
Short, widespread outages like this one can have outsized effects because recommendation systems drive the majority of viewing on the service. While this incident was fixed within a few hours, platform engineers will likely review monitoring and fallback processes to reduce the chance of a recurrence.
We will continue to monitor for any follow-up notices from the company and will update coverage if new details emerge about the root cause or corrective actions taken.
