YouTube suffered a widespread outage on Tuesday, halting video access for users across multiple countries, including India and the United States.
Hundreds of thousands reported failures to load videos and use related services amid the disruption.
Early in the disruption, Google acknowledged the issue in a public statement from TeamYouTube, stating, “We’re aware some of you are having issues accessing YouTube right now. Our teams are aware, and we’ll provide updates as soon as we have them.”
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If you’re having trouble accessing YouTube right now, you’re not alone — our teams are looking into this and will follow up here with updates: https://t.co/7iTU5S9AgT
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) February 18, 2026
YouTube’s help page detailed that a glitch in the recommendations system blocked videos from loading across platforms like the homepage, app, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids. While the homepage recovered, teams continued working on a complete resolution.
Downdetector reported a massive spike in reports, peaking at over 320,000 in the US alone, with India seeing more than 19,000 complaints in the morning hours, confirming the outage’s worldwide reach beyond any single region.
Users encountered app and website crashes, unplayable videos, and constant “something went wrong” alerts during the disruption. YouTube TV and select Google services also faced heightened complaints, pointing to an underlying platform-wide fault.
Downdetector’s user-reported data, peaking sharply, highlighted the chaos, though not exhaustive; social media erupted with global accounts of synced access breakdowns.
Recently, X, formerly Twitter, suffered a significant outage on February 16, disrupting access for over 40,000 users primarily in the US and UK.
Users encountered blank timelines, app crashes, and “Something went wrong” errors on both mobile and desktop, mirroring issues seen in YouTube’s recent global downtime.
This wave of major platform downtimes underscores growing vulnerabilities in global tech infrastructure, raising questions about redundancy amid surging user reliance.
