YouTube down: Users around the world, including those in India, started facing issues with YouTube on Friday evening. The platform is currently facing downtime, with users reporting problems such as videos not playing, heavy buffering, and difficulties accessing the website and mobile app, even with active internet connections.
The outage began around 5:18 PM IST, and the number of complaints rose rapidly. According to real-time tracking service Downdetector, most users faced issues with the desktop or browser version of YouTube. Approximately 73% of the complaints were related to the website, 18% involved video streaming issues, and 9% were related to the mobile app.
The disruption affected thousands globally, with over 11,000 reports at its peak. India was one of the worst-hit regions, recording around 3,336 complaints, with 53% citing server connection issues, 34% website access problems, and 13% video streaming interruptions.
YouTube had not issued any official statement regarding the cause or the expected time for full restoration of services. As a result, users were left waiting while access to their favourite content, including videos, music, and vlogs, remained limited.
A 502 error occurs when one server receives an invalid response from another server. In simple words, Google services fail to communicate properly with each other. This disruption can lead to problems such as video playback issues, search failures, and slow or broken page loading. During the outage, users reported seeing 502 error messages on both YouTube and Google Search. In most cases, this type of error is caused by server-side issues rather than problems with users’ devices.
The issue quickly became a trend on social media as consumers shared error messages and screenshots. Many posts described failed searches and video delays, while others confirmed experiencing similar problems in different regions. The sheer volume of reports suggested a worldwide outage. In the absence of an official statement from Google during the early hours of the disruption, users expressed growing dissatisfaction.
Here are the number of services that went down: