Is YouTube Down Right Now?
YouTube serves billions of hours of video every day, so when it stops working it feels like the whole internet broke. The good news: genuine global YouTube outages are rare. Most of the time, “YouTube is down” turns out to be a problem with your app, your device, or your connection — all fixable in minutes.
Use the live check below to see YouTube's real status right now, measured directly from our server. If YouTube is up for us but broken for you, the troubleshooting steps further down will sort it out.
Checking YouTube…
Common reasons YouTube goes down
Google infrastructure incidents
YouTube runs on Google's global infrastructure. On rare occasions a backend failure takes YouTube offline worldwide — the best-known case was the October 2020 outage that lasted around two hours and affected every region.
Video delivery (CDN) problems
Sometimes youtube.com loads fine but videos buffer forever or refuse to play. That usually means a problem with the edge servers delivering video in your region, not a full outage.
A bad app update
After some mobile app updates, playback breaks on specific phones while the website works perfectly. If the app fails but a browser works, the app is the culprit.
ISP throttling or DNS trouble
Some internet providers throttle video traffic at peak hours, which looks exactly like YouTube being down. A misconfigured DNS can also make YouTube unreachable while everything else works.
What to do when YouTube isn't working
- Run the live status check above — if our server reaches YouTube, the problem is on your side.
- Check whether others report problems (search “YouTube down” on X or a downdetector-style site).
- Test on another device or network — phone on mobile data vs. Wi-Fi tells you a lot.
- Force-close the app, clear its cache, or try YouTube in a browser instead.
- Restart your router and run an internet speed test — slow connections break video first.
- If it's a genuine global outage, just wait: most are resolved within a couple of hours.
YouTube — frequently asked questions
Is YouTube down right now?
Run the live check at the top of this page. It contacts YouTube directly from our server and reports whether it responds, how fast, and which HTTP status it returned.
Why is YouTube not loading videos for me?
The most common causes are a slow or unstable connection, an outdated or buggy YouTube app, corrupted app cache, or ISP throttling of video traffic. Try the steps above before assuming an outage.
How can I tell if YouTube is down for everyone or just me?
If our checker (running on an independent server) reaches YouTube fine, it's just you. Cross-check with outage reports on social media for confirmation.
How long do YouTube outages usually last?
Most are fixed within one to three hours. Google's engineering teams treat YouTube as critical infrastructure, so full-day outages are extremely unusual.
Does YouTube have an official status page?
Google doesn't publish a public real-time dashboard specifically for YouTube. The closest official channel is @TeamYouTube on X, which posts during confirmed incidents.