is youtube down? Service restored after global recommendation-system outage

Short take: A widely used video service experienced a global disruption Tuesday evening that left homepages blank and apps failing for many users. The problem began at about 8: 00 p. m. ET, was blamed on a recommendations-system failure, and company engineers announced a full resolution before 11: 00 p. m. ET.

What happened and when

Users first began encountering problems at roughly 8: 00 p. m. ET, with many reporting that the service's homepage and recommendation feeds were not loading. In many cases the app would open but display an otherwise empty interface—sidebar and search elements appeared, but videos and suggested content did not.

By later in the evening the company acknowledged the incident on its public support channels and said engineers were investigating. An update issued shortly after 9: 00 p. m. ET pointed to the recommendations subsystem as the root of the disruption; the homepage had been restored while teams continued to work on a complete fix. A final notice before 11: 00 p. m. ET confirmed the incident had been resolved and that normal service had returned across web, mobile and ancillary clients.

How widespread was the outage and what users saw

Outage-monitoring feeds and user reports showed a rapid surge in error notifications from across North America, Europe, Latin America and other regions. The totals varied by tracker, but they reached into the hundreds of thousands, underscoring the incident's broad impact.

Symptoms were consistent: blank or black home screens, missing video thumbnails in recommendation lists, interrupted uploads and intermittent trouble with search results for some customers. Some users could still access direct video links or use search to reach specific content, while others encountered failures across desktop and mobile clients. Streaming clients on TVs and dedicated music or kids apps were also affected in several cases.

Community-facing support agents had limited additional detail while engineers worked, and updates were funneled through the service's official support feeds and status communications.

What to do if you still see problems

If you continue to experience issues, try these quick steps: force-close and reopen the app, clear the browser cache and cookies, restart the device, and ensure your app is updated to the latest version. For persistent upload or account-specific problems, wait a short while and attempt the action again—platform-side fixes can take time to propagate globally.

If you rely on the service for work or scheduled posts, consider temporary alternatives such as hosting content on other video or social channels, or sharing direct download links until the platform completes its checks. For creators, local backups of content and scheduled posts are a practical safeguard against rare outages.

Engineers described the root cause as a failure within the recommendations stack that prevented videos from appearing across multiple surfaces. With that component restored and functionality verified, normal operations resumed, though the company noted it would continue monitoring to ensure stability.

This incident serves as a reminder that even major cloud-backed services can suffer momentary outages when a critical internal subsystem fails. For most users the disruption was brief, but the wide range of reports highlights how central these services have become to daily media consumption and content distribution.