WhatsApp outage leaves thousands unable to send photos, videos
What's the story
WhatsApp is facing a major outage today, with thousands of users around the world reporting issues in sending photos, videos, stickers, and other media files. The complaints started pouring in on Monday from several countries including the UK, France, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico. While text messages seemed to work for many users during this time period, multimedia sharing remained affected.
User impact
Multimedia sharing affected for many users
The issues with WhatsApp's multimedia sharing feature were not limited to a specific region. Users from different countries reported similar problems, indicating a widespread disruption.
Some users could receive messages but couldn't send media, while others found that stickers and GIFs had also stopped working.
One user summed up the situation by saying, "Guess multimedia is affected," as others noted photos would show in chats but fail to upload with a "retry" message appearing later on.
Historical context
Spike in user complaints
Outage trackers noted a spike in user complaints during this disruption, similar to previous WhatsApp outages.
At the time of writing, WhatsApp had not publicly commented on what caused this latest issue.
Users who tried basic troubleshooting steps like restarting their devices, toggling between mobile data and Wi-Fi, or reinstalling the app found that the problem still persisted.