WhatsApp users report media-sharing issues globally

Meta-backed WhatsApp users across several countries reported disruptions on Monday, with the messaging platform appearing to stumble particularly over multimedia sharing. Photos, videos, stickers, GIFs and other media files were reportedly slow to send, stuck during uploads or failing altogether.

According to outage-tracking platform Downdetector, reports began pouring in early Monday morning from users experiencing difficulties with the service.

Of the reported problems, around 41 per cent were related to messaging, while 40 per cent concerned the WhatsApp app itself and 13 per cent involved notifications, the tracker showed.

For many users, text messages continued to flow normally, creating a curious split in the service: conversations remained alive, but images and videos struggled to make their way through.

Users said photos and videos either took unusually long to upload or remained frozen in the chat window. In some cases, images appeared in conversations but continued displaying loading indicators, while others were prompted to retry the upload.

Stickers and GIFs also appeared to be caught in the disruption, suggesting that the problem may have been concentrated around WhatsApp’s multimedia services rather than text messaging.

Larger files proved particularly troublesome for some users, with uploads either failing outright or taking considerably longer than usual.

Reports pour in from multiple countries

The disruption appeared to stretch well beyond a single market. Complaints were reported in India, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Spain and Colombia, pointing to a potentially wider service issue rather than an isolated local network or device problem.

The precise scale of the outage and the number of users affected were not immediately clear.

As frustration mounted, users turned to familiar troubleshooting steps, including restarting their phones, switching between Wi-Fi and mobile data and reinstalling the application. However, several users said these measures failed to restore multimedia sharing, particularly for photos and videos.

Downdetector also showed reports of WhatsApp service issues on Sunday, suggesting that the platform may have been experiencing intermittent problems before Monday’s broader wave of complaints.

WhatsApp had not issued an immediate statement addressing the reported disruption.

With IANS inputs