youtube down: Major outage disrupts video service on Feb. 17, 2026

Users across the United States experienced interruptions to the video platform on Feb. 17, 2026. The disruption, which lasted for several hours in some regions, produced error messages, failed loads and playback problems for a large number of viewers and creators.

When and where the outage hit

The first spike in user complaints began late in the afternoon on Feb. 17, 2026, with the U. S. West Coast among the hardest hit. Outage-tracking services logged a surge of reports in the evening, and at the peak more than 30, 000 users were affected. Monitoring services showed fluctuating report counts throughout the day: an early-afternoon check at 2: 00 p. m. ET registered roughly 638 reports, while another snapshot at 3: 59 p. m. ET showed about 591 entries. Later in the incident, totals climbed into the high hundreds and low thousands as residual problems persisted for some users.

By late evening ET the service had returned for many viewers, but isolated issues continued for a subset of devices and accounts. There was no immediate public explanation for the interruption, and recovery appeared to occur unevenly across regions and devices.

How users were affected and quick troubleshooting

The outage manifested in a few common ways: pages and feeds failing to load, videos stuck on a spinner or returning an "Error, try again" message, and app instability. Creators reported upload and publishing delays in some cases, while casual viewers found playlists and subscriptions temporarily inaccessible.

If you still see problems on your device, try these proven quick fixes that cleared the issue for many users:

• Hard-refresh your browser: on Windows use Control + F5; on Mac use Command + Shift + R.
• Close the app completely and restart it: swipe the app away from your recent apps or force-quit before reopening.
• Clear browser or app cache: in desktop browsers, open settings, choose to delete cached images and files and clear them; on mobile, remove the app cache or reinstall the app if needed.
• Restart your device and router: this can clear network-level hiccups or stale connections to the service.

These steps address the common problem of devices holding on to a broken snapshot of the site or app created during the outage. For most users a hard refresh or cache clear was enough to restore normal operation.

What to watch next and what this means for viewers

While the worst of the outage appears to be past, the incident highlights how a single disruption can ripple through viewing habits, creator schedules and ad delivery. Viewers who rely on the service for live events or breaking coverage may want to have alternate platforms or downloads ready for critical content.

For creators, uploads and scheduled premieres that coincided with the outage may need to be rescheduled or re-uploaded. If you encounter persistent errors after trying local fixes, waiting 15–30 minutes and retrying often resolves lingering issues as caches and networks settle back to normal.

We will continue to monitor updates and user feedback. If you experienced problems during the outage, share the device and region where the issue occurred to help build a clearer picture of the incident’s scope.