• Temporary disappearance of suggested clips and the YouTube homepage

• Subscription videos remained playable despite the technical glitch

YouTube experienced a sudden technical outage on Tuesday evening, affecting hundreds of thousands of users, with DownDetector reporting over 300,000 complaints about access issues.

The disruptions began around 5 p.m. PT, with some users noticing partial service restoration by around 6 p.m.

TeamYouTube’s X account stated that support teams were investigating the issue and promised updates.

About 25 minutes later, the account clarified that the problem stemmed from a malfunction in the recommendation system, preventing videos from appearing across multiple interfaces, including the homepage, YouTube app, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids, while noting that the homepage partially returned as work continued on a full fix.

DownDetector data showed complaints peaked at 5:21 p.m. PT before noticeably declining by 6:06 p.m.

During the outage, users could still play videos through subscription pages, while the homepage and the suggestions bar within the video player were completely blank. Access to the homepage later returned, but the suggestions bar remained down.

The glitch affected both the mobile app and desktop version, while ads appeared unaffected when playing videos via subscriptions.

Users in the United States, India, the U.K., and Argentina also reported service interruptions, indicating that the disruption had a global impact.