James Ratcliff joined GameRant as a gaming news writer in 2022. In 2023, James got the opportunity to become a featured writer for various games, and in 2025, he got the opportunity to become a lead writer. He is a third-generation Texan who has been writing professionally for local newspapers for over a decade and covering a variety of topics for his readers. Since 2024, James has devoted himself 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 experiencing technical issues globally and is down for most users. YouTube users took to social media to discuss the issue, reporting that the outage affects both desktop and mobile versions of Google's video service.
As the world leader in user-submitted video content, YouTube videos have become a global source of entertainment since the 2000s. YouTube has grown into a popular streaming service with shorts and long format videos. Users can also watch existing TV shows and movies through the YouTube TV subscription service. YouTube's policy may be controversial, but that hasn't stopped users from coming back to watch their favorite content creators on the platform.
YouTube users report widespread site outage
However, YouTubers who want to watch some videos cannot do so as of this writing. According to user reports on DownDetector, YouTube experienced a major service outage starting at 7:40 PM ET. As of 8:10 PM ET, 338,308 user reports on DownDetector have been posted about the ongoing YouTube outage. Some features will still work, such as subscription tabs and direct channel pages, but most users will not be able to access the YouTube and YouTube TV home pages.
This is a developing news story. Information about YouTube's outage will be updated here as it becomes available.
