On February 17, 2026, YouTube went down for a long time, making it hard for thousands of people in the US and around the world to get to. Google quickly fixed the problem that came up because the recommendations system broke.
More than 240,000 people in the US used Downdetector to report problems, with the most reports coming in between 5:30 and 5:45 PM PST. The West Coast, especially San Francisco and Los Angeles, was hit the hardest. There were about 17,000 incidents in India that affected YouTube.com, apps, Music, Kids, and TV. Users had trouble logging in, playing videos, streaming, and getting to their homepages.
A problem with YouTube’s recommendation system kept videos from loading on homepages, apps, YouTube Music, and Kids. This stopped content from showing up on different surfaces, which saved some features but made it impossible to access the core.
YouTube said that the downtime on X was known and that teams were looking into and fixing problems with YouTube TV logins as well. Around 7:30 PM PST, they sent out a “final update.” The problem with the recommendations had been fixed, and all platforms were back to normal.
