A widespread outage disrupted YouTube on Wednesday, affecting users across multiple countries, including India and the United States. Hundreds of thousands of users reported issues such as videos failing to load, app crashes, and repeated “something went wrong” error messages.
Early in the disruption, parent company Google acknowledged the issue via TeamYouTube, stating that its teams were investigating and would provide updates. Later, YouTube’s help page clarified that the problem stemmed from an issue within its recommendations system, which prevented videos from appearing across multiple surfaces — including the homepage, the main app, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids.
Outage tracking website Downdetector reported that more than 320,000 users in the US flagged issues at the peak of the outage. In India, over 19,000 complaints were logged during the morning hours, indicating the problem was not confined to a specific region.
Early in the disruption, Google acknowledged the issue in a public statement posted by TeamYouTube on social media. “We’re aware some of you are having issues accessing YouTube right now. Our teams are aware, and we’ll provide updates as soon as we have them,” the statement said.
Later, YouTube’s help page explained that “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 company added that while the homepage had been restored, engineers were still working toward a complete fix.
Users reported encountering repeated “something went wrong” messages, difficulties playing videos, and problems opening the app or website. YouTube TV and certain Google services also experienced elevated complaint levels.
YouTube, owned by Google, has more than 2.5 billion monthly active users, making it the world’s largest video-sharing platform.
