Just hours after more than 320,000 users reported being unable to access the platform, YouTube has publicly responded to the widespread outage that disrupted service across the United States.
On Tuesday night, the company confirmed that viewers were experiencing technical difficulties and assured users that the issue was under review. “If you’re having trouble accessing YouTube right now, you’re not alone,” the post read. “Our teams are looking into this.”
If you’re having trouble accessing YouTube right now, you’re not alone — our teams are looking into this and will follow up here with updates: https://t.co/7iTU5S9AgT
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) February 18, 2026
Earlier in the evening, outage-tracking site Downdetector showed a dramatic surge in complaints, with hundreds of thousands of reports tied to YouTube’s main platform. Additional issues were also flagged for YouTube TV and Google services. While some users were still able to load the homepage or stream content, others encountered error messages and failed video playback.
YouTube encouraged users to visit its support page for updates as engineers investigated the disruption. The company has not yet revealed what caused the outage or how long systems were impacted at full scale. As of Tuesday night, the homepage had been restored for all users, though other features remain down.
Although access appears to be stabilizing, it remains unclear whether every feature has been completely restored nationwide.
