YouTube outages: Is it still down? Millions left without access to popular video platform in UK and US as major outage confirmed
Millions of people were left without access to YouTube on Thursday morning after the world's largest streaming site went down.
Just after midnight, reports began to spike on outage tracker DownDetector that the platform wasn't working - with videos apparently unable to load or play. YouTube later confirmed that users were unable to play videos - before eventually resolving the issue an hour later.
In the US alone, more than 260,000 people reported at first that the streaming platform crashed. In Britain, that number sat at almost 50,000 without access to the website.
UK users were split on the exact type of outage, with 58 per cent saying they suffered issues with videos loading. A further 35 per cent listed the main issue as the app, with eight per cent pointing to the website more generally.
Reports initially appeared to have peaked at around 12.30am. A consistent level of reports worldwide were still being filed at 1am, indicating the outage may have lasted longer than first thought.
Then, YouTube itself addressed the outage, saying: "If you’re not able to play videos on YouTube right now - we’re on it! Thanks for your patience." As well as the principal YouTube website, the streamer's other domains like YouTube Music, YouTubeTV and even Google itself saw huge surges in DownDetector reports.
Shortly before 1.30am BST, YouTube confirmed the outage was over. "Confirming this is resolved across all YouTube services," an update on YouTube Help said. "Thanks again for your patience!"