‘Something went wrong’: Why YouTube services were down worldwide

If you have tried to access YouTube and come across the ‘Something Went Wrong’ error message, don’t fret, as you are not alone. From India to the United States to Canada, thousands of users of the popular video streaming app, owned by Alphabet, are unable to access the site.

So, what’s going on? We get you a quick guide on the latest outage at YouTube.

>> YouTube users started witnessing problems trying to access the site around 7:45 pm ET and it spiked by 8 pm ET (5 pm PT).

>> The outage seemed to hit all at once as devices couldn’t load YouTube’s website, while the YouTube app showed a blank screen with a “something went wrong” message.

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>> At first, Downdetector noted that around 300,000 people had experienced issues with YouTube. However, as time passed, the situation worsened. At last count, Downdetector noted 837,973 reports from the US, 160,259 from Canada, 106,261 from Brazil, 93,284 from the United Kingdom and 42,994 reports from Germany.

>> In the US alone, 46.7 per cent of users were reporting problems accessing the YouTube app and 21.1 per cent reported problems with the website.

> Downdetector’s YouTube outage map showed a serious concentration of service being lost in big cities across the US. Namely, people in New York City, Washington, DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco were hit the hardest. Smaller concentrations of outage reports came from Seattle, Chicago, Phoenix.

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>> The problems at the video streaming site also led to ‘Youtube not working’ becoming one of the most searched terms on Google in real time.

>> Many users also took to other social media networks to voice their frustration. “Looks like YouTube isn’t working properly,” Indiana-based journalist Hannah Adamson wrote on X. “I can still access saved and recently viewed videos, but nothing on the home page loads. Seeing a lot of people on X saying YouTube isn’t working for them either.”

>> Another user joked that YouTubers were now “writing 45 minute scripts about The Great YouTube Outage of 2026.”

Everybody running to Twitter to see why YouTube is down #youtubedown pic.twitter.com/vxMuoX8gDE

— Luciano Lucas (@tharealluciano) February 18, 2026

>> An hour into the outage, YouTube put out a statement that read, “If you’re having trouble accessing YouTube right now, you’re not alone — our teams are looking into this.”

>> Later, YouTube updated its message to say, “An issue with our recommendations system prevented videos from appearing across surfaces on YouTube (including the homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music and YouTube Kids). The homepage is back, but we’re still working on a full fix – more coming soon!”

> As of writing this report, YouTube is coming back from the brink. Downdetector has noted a drop in the number of reports coming in.

>> The last time YouTube went down was in October 2025, with over 800,000 users reporting issues with the site. At the time, the company had provided no reason why YouTube went down but users were relieved that their screens, and playlists, were finally back to normal.

>> Google-owned YouTube is the world’s largest video sharing platform, with over 2.5 billion users actively using the site each month.

With inputs from agencies