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Just as people were settling in to primetime viewing hours on the east coast in the US and the end of the workday in the west, YouTube seemed to take a nap as more than 800,000 people in the US and hundreds of thousands elsewhere in the world reported the loss of the feed, according to Downdetector. The outage started to gain traction at 5 p.m. PT and quickly spiked to 338,308 reports by 5:10 p.m., according to Datadetector’s graph.
As of 6:30 p.m. PT, the number of reports had dropped to under 50,000. Google (which owns YouTube) provided a status update naming 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).”
Downdetector reported the peak of a YouTube outage on Feb. 17, 2026.
CNET staffers who noticed the outage saw YouTube’s familiar home screen with a search bar and side column, but no videos. YouTube apps, such as on an iPad, showed a 1980s-style pixel artwork and the message “Something went wrong.”
This is a developing story. YouTube and Google didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Disclaimer: Downdetector is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)
