YouTube is experiencing outages across the United States, with users in other countries like Canada, India, Philippines, Australia and Russia also having problems accessing the website. The problem appears to have started around 8 a.m. Eastern time and reached 338,000 reports on Downdetector before subsiding. More users reported problems accessing the app, but I personally lost access to the web homepage first.
As of 9:22 p.m., users are still reporting being unable to access YouTube on Reddit. As of 9:33 p.m., users are complaining that they are still unable to access the service, although others say it is backed up for them. Some people are reporting partial restoration of service, with the homepage now accessible but no recommended videos showing.
DownDetector also received thousands of reports of Google being down around 8 pm Eastern Time. As of 9:53 p.m., Engadget managing editor Cherlyn Lo reported that both YouTube and Google Home Assistant were still inaccessible to her. At 10:12 pm Eastern, Team YouTube posted on Twitter that the issue has been fully fixed. Although it did not explain why YouTube was down, the team acknowledged the problem just before 9 p.m. and posted an update 20 minutes later that there were issues with its recommendation system, even though its homepage was back up.
Update, February 17, 2026, 10:27 PM ET: YouTube says the problem has been completely fixed.
Update, February 17, 2026, 10:08 PM ET: Updated with reports that some Google services are also down for some users.
Update, February 17, 2026, 9:34 PM ET: Updated with reports from users.
Updated, February 17, 2026, 9:26 PM ET: Updated to correct the timing of the outage, added new countries where this outage is occurring, and added new reports of YouTube still being inaccessible.
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