Users worldwide were left staring at blank screens Tuesday night as YouTube suddenly stopped working.
The company has now confirmed that a glitch in its recommendations system triggered the widespread outage.
What caused the YouTube outage?
In a statement shared via the official TeamYouTube account on X, the company said the disruption stemmed from an issue with its recommendations system.
This algorithm determines which videos appear based on users’ past viewing behavior. When it malfunctioned, videos failed to load across multiple surfaces.
According to YouTube, the problem prevented videos from appearing on the homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids.
“The homepage is back, but we're still working on a full fix — more coming soon!” the company initially posted on its support page.
Shortly after the first update, YouTube acknowledged additional problems.
The company said it was receiving reports that some users were unable to log in to YouTube TV. Officials clarified that this was linked to the broader outage affecting the platform’s ecosystem.
Engineers worked on resolving both the recommendations issue and the login disruption simultaneously.
Timeline of disruption
Reports of the outage began surfacing around 8:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
By approximately 10:15 p.m. ET, YouTube issued a final update confirming the issue had been resolved.
“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,” the company said, thanking users for their patience.
Global impact and user reports
Crowdsourced outage tracker Downdetector recorded a sharp spike in error reports during the disruption.
More than 1.6 million user reports were logged in the last 24 hours, with roughly half originating from the United States. However, users across the globe experienced issues.
In Australia, attempts to access YouTube resulted in blank screens displaying only the platform’s sidebar and search bar. Similar reports emerged from other regions.
The disruption adds to a growing list of high-profile internet outages in recent months.
Major services, including Verizon, Microsoft 365, and TikTok, have also experienced service interruptions.
While Tuesday’s outage was resolved within a few hours, it underscores how dependent users have become on large-scale digital platforms.
