YouTube was down for thousands of users in the US
YouTube is experiencing an outage in the United States, and users in other countries like Canada, India, Philippines, Australia, and Russia are also having issues accessing the website. The issue appears to have started around 8 p.m. Eastern Time and reached 338,000 reports on Downdetector before starting to decline. More users have reported having issues accessing the app, but I personally lost access to the web home page first.
As of 9:22 p.m., users are still reporting that they can’t access YouTube on Reddit. As of 9:33 p.m., users are complaining that they still can’t access the service, although others say it’s back for them. Some people are reporting a partial restoration of service, with the home page now accessible but not seeing any recommended videos.
Downdetector also received thousands of reports that Google was down around 8 p.m. Eastern Time. At 9:53 p.m., Engadget editor Cherlynn Low reports that YouTube and Google Home Assistant are still inaccessible to her. At 10:12 p.m. Eastern Time, the YouTube team posted to X that the issue had been completely resolved. Although it didn’t explain why YouTube was down, the team acknowledged the problem before 9 p.m. and posted an update 20 minutes later saying its recommendation system was experiencing issues, even though its homepage was back.
Updated, February 17, 2026, 10:27 p.m. ET: YouTube says the issue has been completely resolved.
Updated, February 17, 2026, 10:08 p.m. ET: Updated with reports that some Google services are also down for some users.
Updated, February 17, 2026, 9:34 p.m. ET: Updated with user reports.
Updated, February 17, 2026, 9:26 p.m. ET: Updated to correct outage time, added new countries where it’s available, and added new reports that YouTube is still inaccessible.
