YouTube outage cause revealed: Here's what we know

YouTube suffered a global outage on Tuesday, with thousands of people reporting issues with the platform from around 8:00 p.m. ET. Now, we know what caused it.

In a statement posted to the official TeamYouTube X account, the company revealed that the outage was caused by a problem with the recommendations system. This algorithmic system is responsible for offering you videos it thinks you'll want to watch based on your past viewing habits. The company provided additional details on a Google support page.

"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 company explained. "The homepage is back, but we're still working on a full fix — more coming soon!"

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It provided a further update within the hour: "We're also seeing a small number of reports that some people are unable to login to YouTube TV. This is related to the broader issue across YouTube, and we're also working on a fix here."

Finally, around 10:15 p.m. ET, the company shared a "final update," which stated: "The issue with our recommendations system has been resolved and all of our platforms (YouTube.com, the YouTube app, YouTube Music, Kids, and TV) are back to normal! We really appreciate you bearing with us while we sorted this out."

Crowdsourced outage tracker Downdetector saw a spike in activity for YouTube on Tuesday evening, with the platform receiving more than 1.6 million user error reports in the last 24 hours. (Disclosure: Mashable and Downdetector share the same parent company, Ziff Davis.) Approximately half of these reports came from the U.S., with users encountering issues with the video-sharing platform's app and website, though people across the globe were impacted.

Mashable was unable to use YouTube in Australia, with attempts to access the website resulting in a blank screen showing only YouTube's sidebar and search bar.

The internet has seen several high-profile outages in recent months, affecting companies such as Verizon, Microsoft 365, and TikTok. In some ways, maybe this latest outage is a sign that we should all go outside and touch some grass.

UPDATE: Feb. 17, 2026, 10:26 p.m. EST This article has been updated with additional statements from YouTube/Google.