YouTube restored its services on Tuesday after a brief disruption left thousands of users worldwide unable to stream videos.
The outage was widely reported on Downdetector, where users flagged issues accessing videos on YouTube’s website and mobile applications.
In a statement, the company said the disruption was caused by a technical issue within its recommendation system, which prevented videos from loading across various YouTube platforms.
“The problem with our recommendations system has been fixed, and all of our services (YouTube.com, the YouTube app, YouTube Music, Kids, and TV) are now functioning normally,” YouTube said.
At the peak of the outage, Downdetector recorded more than 320,000 reports of YouTube-related problems in the United States. The monitoring website compiles user-submitted complaints, and the actual number of affected users may have been higher.
Reports of service disruption also emerged from India, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Mexico, indicating that the issue had a global impact.
According to data from Statista, YouTube had over 2.5 billion monthly viewers worldwide as of early 2025, while its YouTube Music and Premium subscriber base reached 100 million.
Parent company Google has previously stated that more than one billion hours of YouTube content are watched daily on television sets, with over 500 hours of video uploaded to the platform every minute.
The disruption was resolved within hours, and services have since returned to normal.
