YouTube experienced an outage affecting thousands of users in the United States and other countries on February 17, 2026. The issue began around 8 PM Eastern Time and was reported by users in Canada, India, the Philippines, Australia, and Russia.
Downdetector recorded 338,000 outage reports before the number started to decline. Reports indicated more users had trouble accessing the YouTube application compared to the website’s homepage.
Google also received thousands of outage reports around 8 PM Eastern Time. At 9:53 PM, Engadget Managing Editor Cherlynn Low stated that both YouTube and Google Home Assistant remained inaccessible for her.
As of 9:22 PM, users continued to report access issues on Reddit. By 9:33 PM, some users reported partial restoration of service, with the homepage accessible but without recommended videos. Others indicated complete restoration of service.
Team YouTube acknowledged the problem before 9 PM. An update 20 minutes later stated issues with its recommendation system, despite the homepage being back online. At 10:12 PM Eastern, Team YouTube posted on X that the issue had been completely resolved. The cause of the outage was not specified.
