YouTube’s big global outage on February 17, 2026 lasted roughly 1.5–2 hours for most people, and the platform is currently back up and working normally.

How long was YouTube down?

  • Reports say the outage started around 7:50–8:00 PM Eastern time (about 4:50–5:00 PM Pacific).
  • Major outage-tracking sites showed hundreds of thousands of problem reports at the peak.
  • Team YouTube’s public updates indicated services were fully fixed a little after 10:10 PM Eastern, so the main disruption window was about 90–120 minutes.
  • After that, some users still reported minor glitches, but core video playback and access were restored.

So if you’re asking “how long will YouTube be down for?” about this specific 2026 outage, the answer is: it already ended after around two hours, and YouTube should be working again now in most regions.

What caused the outage?

  • Google and Team YouTube tied the issue to a problem with YouTube’s recommendations system (the algorithm that decides what to show on your homepage and elsewhere).
  • That glitch stopped videos from appearing across several surfaces: homepage, app, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids.
  • Once they stabilized recommendations, they confirmed all platforms (web, app, YouTube TV, Music, Kids) were back to normal.

What’s the latest news right now?

  • Tech outlets running live blogs have marked the outage as resolved and note that YouTube is functioning again globally.
  • Outage monitoring sites that track live user complaints show that the huge spike of reports from the outage window has dropped back to normal background levels.
  • Some forum-style status pages still show scattered “is YouTube down?” posts, but those are typical after a big incident as people troubleshoot their own devices or connections.

What you can do if it’s still down for you

Even though the main outage is over, you might still see issues locally. Try:

  1. Refresh and relogin
    • Hard-refresh the page or restart the app, then sign out and back into your Google account.
  2. Check a status/outage page
    • Look at real-time outage maps or complaint feeds to see if others near you are still having trouble.
  1. Test another network/device
    • Try mobile data instead of Wi‑Fi, or test on another device to see if it’s a local network or device issue.
  2. Wait a bit
    • After big fixes roll out, there can be short regional delays while caches and servers sync.

If you’re working on something important (like uploading a video or watching a livestream), assume that future outages of this type will also likely last on the order of 1–2 hours , not many hours or days, based on this incident’s pattern.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.