James Ratcliff joined GameRant in 2022 as a gaming news writer. In 2023, James was offered the opportunity to become an occasional feature writer for various games and then a senior writer in 2025. He is a third-generation Texan who has written professionally for more than a decade in local newspapers, covering a variety of topics for his readers. Since 2024, James has shifted his full focus to covering gaming news.
[UPDATE: As of 12:00 AM Eastern, most YouTube functions have returned to normal. The outage lasted approximately two hours. Although some DownDetector user reports still indicated possible issues with the desktop and mobile sites, all YouTube services are back online. YouTube has not officially commented on the site’s earlier issues. The original story is as follows.]
YouTube, the world's most popular video website, is facing technical problems worldwide and is down for many users. YouTube users took to social media to discuss the issue and reported that the outage affected both the desktop and mobile versions of Google's video service.
As the global leader in user-submitted video content, YouTube videos have been global entertainment since the 2000s. Along with short and long-form videos, YouTube has grown as a popular streaming service. Additionally, users can watch traditional TV shows and movies through the YouTube TV subscription service. Although YouTube's policies have been controversial, it hasn't stopped users from coming back to watch their favorite content creators on the platform.
YouTube users report widespread site outages
However, YouTube users trying to catch up on some videos are unable to do so at the time of this writing. User reports on DownDetector indicated that YouTube has been experiencing a major service outage since 7:40 PM Eastern. As of 8:10 PM Eastern, 338,308 user reports had been posted on DownDetector about the ongoing YouTube outage. Although some features, such as the subscription tab and live channel pages, still work, the home pages of YouTube and YouTube TV are not accessible for most users.
This is a developing news story. Information about the YouTube outage will be updated here as soon as it becomes available.
