YouTube hit by global outage affecting users in India and US

YouTube suffered a widespread global outage on Tuesday, leaving users across multiple countries unable to load videos or access key features on the platform.

The disruption affected users in India, the United States and several other regions, with many reporting that the app and website failed to function properly. Videos would not play, while others encountered repeated error messages stating that “something went wrong”.

Early in the incident, Google acknowledged the problem in a public update issued by TeamYouTube, saying it was aware that some users were experiencing difficulties and that teams were investigating.

A later update on the platform’s help page attributed the issue to a malfunction in its recommendations system, which prevented videos from appearing across various surfaces, including the homepage, the main app and related services such as YouTube Music and YouTube Kids.

The company said the homepage had been restored but that work was ongoing to implement a complete fix.

Outage monitoring website Downdetector recorded a sharp spike in complaints during the disruption. In the United States, more than 320,000 users reported issues at the height of the outage. In India, reports also surged rapidly, with over 19,000 complaints logged within minutes during the morning hours.

Downdetector compiles its data from user-submitted reports and other indicators, meaning the figures may not represent the total number of affected users but provide a strong measure of disruption trends.

Some users also flagged issues with YouTube TV and other related services, pointing to a broader platform-side problem. Social media platforms were quickly flooded with posts from users across different time zones reporting simultaneous access failures, underlining the global scale of the outage.

With agency input