Major YouTube Outage Disrupts Millions Globally in October 2025
On October 15, 2025, YouTube, the world's largest video-sharing platform, experienced a significant global outage that affected millions of users across major regions including the United States, Europe, Asia, and India. The platform's core services, including video playback on YouTube itself, YouTube Music, and YouTube TV, were disrupted for approximately 90 minutes before normal service was restored.
Outage Details and User Impact
Users began noticing issues around 7 pm ET (4:30 am IST Thursday), with error messages such as "An error occurred. Please try again later" on desktop and "Something went wrong" on mobile apps. Videos would often fail to play, apps froze, and streaming was interrupted. Offline downloads on YouTube Music continued to work, but streaming failed globally.
According to outage-monitoring service Downdetector, more than 800,000 users worldwide reported problems during the outage, with over 366,000 reports from U.S. users alone. Other impacted countries included the UK, Canada, Australia, and throughout Europe. In India, approximately 63% of users reported video playback errors, and around 30% faced mobile app-specific issues.
The disruption caused significant frustration among users, with many taking to social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) to report video cutouts, playback failures, and app crashes. Some speculated about possible cyberattacks like a DDoS attack, but YouTube and its parent company Google neither confirmed nor commented on such claims.
Response and Resolution
YouTube promptly acknowledged the issue on its status page and social media, reassuring users that it was actively investigating the problem. By about 5:30 pm PT (6:00 am IST Thursday), YouTube confirmed the resolution of the outage and restored access across all affected platforms. A Google spokesperson thanked users for their patience and credited technical teams for quickly resolving the disruption.
Significance and Aftermath
The outage underscores the massive reach and reliance on YouTube, which boasts over 2.5 billion active monthly users globally. Any service interruption, even for a short period, has far-reaching impacts on content creators, viewers, and businesses relying on the platform.
During such global outages, users often explore alternative platforms for video streaming. The incident sparked discussions about YouTube alternatives but also highlighted YouTube's dominant position in the streaming ecosystem.
This October 2025 YouTube outage is among the largest service disruptions in recent times, reminding users and platforms alike of the importance of robust infrastructure and quick response mechanisms to mitigate widespread impact.
If you rely heavily on YouTube for entertainment or business, keeping an eye on downtime reports and exploring backup options might be prudent for the future.