Hundreds of thousands of YouTube users in Chicago and around the country reported issues with the video sharing platform Tuesday evening.
Reports of issues with the video sharing platform began popping up around 6:50 p.m. CT Tuesday, according to Downdetector. By 7:18 p.m., over 355,000 users had reported issues with YouTube.
A Downdetector heatmap showing reports of issues with the platform shows users across the country were having trouble, including in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Pheonix.
“I was in the middle of watching a video when suddenly it shut down,” one commenter said on DownDetector around 7:40 p.m. CT.
“#YouTubeDOWN” began trending on X shortly after users began reporting problems, with many flocking to X to complain about the issues.
YouTube posted on X about the outage around 7:56 p.m.
“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://support.google.com/youtube/thread/410904426,” YouTube said in the post, later adding that part of the issue had been fixed around 8:21 p.m.
Update: An issue with our recommendations system prevented videos from appearing across surfaces on YouTube (including the homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music and YouTube Kids). The homepage is back, but we’re still working on a full fix – more coming soon!
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) February 18, 2026
No additional information was immediately available.
Check back for more on this developing story.
