Something Went Wrong… YouTube suddenly stalled, millions of users worried across the world including India

By Samira Vishwas On Feb 18, 2026

New Delhi: The video platform YouTube, which has become a part of the everyday life of millions of people around the world, suddenly came to a standstill on Tuesday, February 18. In many countries including India, users were neither able to watch videos nor upload any new content. As soon as the app was being opened, the message ‘Something Went Wrong’ was visible on the screen. This unexpected technical glitch surprised millions of people.

#YouTubeDOWN #youtube
Is this happening with you too?? pic.twitter.com/gSTfmDaTVr
— nkd👾 (@navaldogra) February 18, 2026

According to OutDetector, a website that tracks outages, the problem began around 8 pm (EST) in the US. More than three lakh users lodged complaints there. After some time, similar problems started appearing in India also. In the morning, more than 18 thousand users in India reported the platform not working.

Both mobile and desktop affected

This problem was not limited to mobile apps only. Users reported that videos were not loading even on the desktop version and the homepage was not refreshing. Some people were unable to see search results, while many users failed to play the video. It is clear that this disturbance was on a wide scale.

User reaction on social media

As soon as news of the outage spread, #YouTubeDown started trending on social media. People gave both amusing and disappointing reactions. Someone wrote that it became difficult to cook without YouTube, while someone called it “dinner time crisis”. Many memes and posts went viral, in which users shared the impact on their routine in a light-hearted manner.

Everybody running to Twitter to see why YouTube is down #YouTubeDOWN pic.twitter.com/erj9YMlEWA
— Rahul Jadia (@jadiarahul) February 18, 2026

The reason is still not clear

No official statement has been issued yet by Google or YouTube. Technical experts believe that this could be a server related problem, which started from America and spread to other countries. Usually such outages are due to server glitches, network issues or system update failure, but nothing can be said for sure without official confirmation.