YouTube is suffering a widespread outage on Tuesday night, forcing countless people to find other ways to entertain themselves for at least a few minutes. It’s unclear what exactly is causing the outage, but the official YouTube support account on Twitter acknowledged the issue just before 9:45 PM ET and says that work is being done to resolve it. No timetable was given for the resolution, but we’ll update this post when we know more.
Here’s the tweet from @TeamYouTube, which is all we’ve got regarding the outage so far. The official YouTube Twitter page retweeted this message as well, but didn’t add any additional details about the issue:
Thanks for your reports about YouTube, YouTube TV and YouTube Music access issues. We're working on resolving this and will let you know once fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will keep you updated.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2018
If you visit YouTube.com or any of the YouTube branded apps, including YouTube TV and YouTube Music, you will be met with a blank page. As you can see at downdetector.com, the entire map is lit up, signaling that this isn’t contained to one specific area. Seemingly no matter where you are, YouTube is unavailable.
UPDATE | 10/16 at 10:40 PM ET: YouTube appears to be back up and running, but no statement yet. At the least, it’s back up in New York and appears to be coming back in other regions as well.
UPDATE | 10/16 at 11:00 PM ET: Official confirmation in the form of a tweet that YouTube is operational:
We're back! Thanks for all of your patience. If you continue to experience issues, please let us know. https://t.co/NVU5GP7Sy6
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2018
I’m not sure how we managed to survive that episode, but I’m proud of us for managing it. Let’s all reward ourselves by watching a bunch of pointless videos on YouTube instead of getting a good night’s sleep.
