YouTube hit by global outage as thousands of users struggle to access streaming platform

Thousands of users across the globe were unable to access YouTube on Tuesday evening, as the video sharing platform appeared to be hit by a worldwide outage.

According to Downdetector, a crowdsourced site, over 800,000 (and rising) complaints have been received in the U.S. alone, with further less significant reports received in countries including Canada, Brazil, the U.K. and Germany.

The majority of reports appear to be connected to difficulty accessing the platform via the YouTube app, however web reports have also emerged, with the main site loading, but not the homepage.

Crucially, the outage doesn’t appear to be affecting everyone, but it has caused a significant wave of frustration among users, many of which were left frantic over being unable to access videos.

“Looks like YouTube isn’t working properly,” Indiana-based journalist Hannah Adamson said 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," she added.

The outage first hit at around 8pm EST, when 75,000 users originally flagged the issue.

Since then, reports have been flying in, with the overall global total surpassing 1 million outage reports in a matter of hours.

As the largest streaming platform in the United States, YouTube was quick to assure users that it was in the process of getting to the root of the problem and aimed to have things back online and working normally as soon as possible.

In a statement shared on their social media platforms, they wrote: "Hi everyone, 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.”

A second update then followed: "We are aware of the ongoing issue impacting YouTube homepage, recommendations, search and uploads and are working to fix it. Please follow along in our Community for updates. Our support agents do not have any additional information to share with you at this time.”

A short time later, the company announced it had managed to get partially back online as it told users: “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!”