YouTube seems to be down for a lot of users, with videos stuck in ad loops or not loading at all.
If you’ve been trying to watch a video on YouTube today and it just keeps showing ads or refuses to play anything at all, you’re not alone.
Reports are pouring in from users around the world saying YouTube isn’t working properly right now. The issue seems to affect both the website and the app, with people stuck in endless ad loops where videos never actually start playing. Others say the video player simply fails to load with a message “Video unavailable,” or the site doesn’t respond at all.
According to Downdetector, reports started spiking around 4:13 PM PT on October 15, quickly passing 1,000 and rising fast. Around 90% of users say they’re having trouble with video streaming, while the rest report problems with the website itself or uploading videos, pointing to a platform-wide issue, not something limited to one region.
Update, October 15, 5:25 PM PT
YouTube services appear to be coming back online slowly. Users are reporting that videos are starting to load again. We’ll continue to monitor the situation as service stability improves.
At the time of writing, YouTube hasn’t shared any official update on what’s going on. Some users speculate it might be a backend or ad system glitch since ads are running repeatedly while videos fail to play, but there’s no confirmation yet.
This outage follows a recent streak of big platform hiccups, with Steam and Xbox Live both going down earlier this month due to suspected DDoS attacks and connectivity issues. While there’s no evidence linking those incidents to YouTube’s current problems, it’s been a rough couple of weeks for online services in general.
For now, there’s not much you can do other than wait for YouTube to fix things on its end. We’ll keep an eye on the situation and update this story once there’s an official statement or signs of recovery.
