youtube down: Service Restored After Hundreds of Thousands Report Access Problems

On Feb. 17, 2026, the video platform experienced a widespread outage that left many users unable to access the site and app for roughly two hours. The company confirmed the issue was resolved by about 10: 00 p. m. ET after an earlier spike in error activity around 8: 00 p. m. ET.

Timeline of the outage

Evening disruptions began to surge at approximately 8: 00 p. m. ET when an unofficial, crowd-sourced outage tracker logged roughly 350, 000 problem reports. Users primarily complained that the mobile app and the homepage were failing to load personalized content; in many cases individual videos could still be played, but home feeds and recommendations were blank or produced error messages.

Within a couple of hours the company posted a message on its help page stating the recommendations system issue had been resolved and that the core services — including the main website, the mobile app, music and TV interfaces, and kids profiles — were back to normal. The company also acknowledged a separate, smaller set of login problems affecting the TV subscription offering and said engineers were addressing that as part of the broader fix.

What users saw and how to fix lingering problems

The disruption produced a range of user experiences: some people were completely locked out, others could access saved videos but not the homepage, and a subset encountered login failures on connected-TV devices. The interruption sparked a steady stream of commentary online, where creators and viewers traded jokes about the outage—and some creators even teased long-form retrospectives on what they called "The Great Outage of 2026. "

If you still encounter errors after the company’s fix, try these standard troubleshooting steps:

• Hard refresh your browser: on Windows use Control + F5; on Mac use Command + Shift + R.
• Force-close and fully restart the mobile app (swipe it away from recent apps, then reopen).
• Clear cached data: delete cached images and files in your browser settings, or clear the app cache on Android; reinstall the app if problems persist.
• Sign out and sign back in, or reboot the device, especially for connected-TV setups that can retain a broken session from the outage window.

Those steps typically resolve lingering issues caused by devices holding on to a mid-outage snapshot of the service.

Company response and what this means going forward

The company acknowledged the disruption and communicated that the specific fault affected its recommendations system, which in turn impacted the appearance and functionality of home pages and feeds. Engineers pushed fixes that restored normal behavior across the product family by about 10: 00 p. m. ET.

Outages of this scale—affecting hundreds of thousands of users in a concentrated period—underscore how dependent many users and creators have become on a small number of large streaming and distribution systems. For now, the company has signaled the matter is closed, but it may follow up with more technical details if an internal post-mortem reveals systemic causes or lessons learned. In the meantime, affected users who remain unable to access the service after following basic troubleshooting steps should wait a short while for caches and content delivery networks to fully refresh before attempting further fixes.

The interruption was a clear reminder for casual viewers and professionals alike to keep backup access plans and local copies of important uploads, and to be prepared for occasional downtime even from the largest services.