YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing site, went down for many hours starting late on February 17 and lasting into the early hours of February 18. Countless people around the world reported that videos would not play, the app refused to open properly, and even the website stopped working. The trouble hit several nations hard, including India, the United States, and Britain.
Reports showed the scale of the problem clearly. In the United States alone, more than 320,000 users posted complaints on DownDetector. In India, the number of reports jumped sharply between 6:30 am and 7:00 am IST. At its peak, over 240,000 complaints came in from across the globe during that time. This proved the issue was not limited to one place but spread worldwide.
According to DownDetector figures, about 56 percent of users had trouble with the mobile app. Around 17 percent could not reach the website at all, while nearly 15 percent found themselves unable to log in. Many also mentioned failures in video playback, problems getting into accounts, and interruptions on YouTube TV streaming.
Google did not share an official reason for the breakdown. Early signs pointed to a server-related fault. Experts believe it may have involved the authentication system or backend services that link Google accounts to YouTube profiles. Because the glitch was so widespread, simple fixes like reinstalling the app or clearing cache did not help users.
As soon as the outage began, people turned to social media platform X to share their frustration and humor. One person wrote, “YouTube is down everywhere—hope it comes back soon.” Another joked, “When YouTube stops, everyone starts checking on Twitter.”
After staying offline for some time on Wednesday, YouTube came back to life. The company announced that its team had fixed the technical issue. In an update on X, YouTube said, “And we’re back!! The issue with YouTube has now been resolved. Thanks for all the reports and for sticking with us.”
Such large disruptions are rare for YouTube, a platform seen as very reliable since its launch in 2005. In the past, similar big outages happened in October 2018, when YouTube, YouTube Music, and YouTube TV faced trouble for over an hour. In December 2020, part of a wider Google service problem affected YouTube for about 45 minutes. More recently, in October 2025, another major outage drew between 800,000 and 1 million reports, hitting users in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia with playback errors, app crashes, and login failures.
Most of these incidents get resolved within 30 minutes to two hours. Google’s huge data centers and automatic backup systems usually bring services back quickly.
YouTube remains enormous in reach. According to DataReportal and Global Media Insight, between 2.7 and 2.85 billion people use it every month in 2025-2026. Each day, roughly 120 to 210 million users sign in. With so many depending on it, even a short technical hiccup can touch hundreds of millions of lives.
