On Tuesday evening, YouTube went down for hundreds of thousands worldwide: blank screens and "Something Went Wrong" errors popped up everywhere, from the main site to YouTube Music, Kids, and TV.
The issues started around 5:30pm PT and quickly flooded social feeds with complaints from the US UK and beyond.
YouTube explains cause of outage
Turns out, a problem with YouTube's recommendations system prevented videos from appearing across multiple surfaces (homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music, Kids, and TV).
YouTube acknowledged the mess on X (formerly Twitter) and got teams working on it right away.
Things were mostly back to normal within two hours, with full service restored by just after 8pm PT.
Outage exposed how much we rely on YouTube
This roughly two-hour outage affected hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. It exposed how much creators and viewers rely on a single platform for content and connection.
For many who lost livestreams or access mid-scroll, it was a reminder of just how central YouTube has become in daily life.