YouTube experienced an outage affecting users in the United States and several other countries, including Canada, India, the Philippines, Australia, and Russia.
Reports of the issue began around 8 PM Eastern time. Downdetector recorded 338,000 reports at its peak.
Users reported difficulties accessing both the YouTube website and its application. Downdetector also received thousands of reports regarding Google being down at approximately 8 PM Eastern time.
As of 9:22 PM, users continued to report inaccessibility on Reddit. At 9:33 PM, while some users indicated restoration of service, others still reported issues. Some users noted partial service, with the homepage accessible but recommended videos absent.
Team YouTube acknowledged the problem on X before 9 PM. An update 20 minutes later stated issues with its recommendation system, despite the homepage being back.
At 10:12 PM Eastern, Team YouTube posted on X that the issue was completely fixed.
Aaaand we're back!! This issue has been fixed across YouTube. Thanks for all the reports and for bearing with us while we sorted it out ❤️ https://t.co/cnlULBUJe7
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) February 18, 2026
