Jakarta. A global YouTube service disruption on Wednesday triggered widespread disturbance across multiple countries, including Indonesia, after millions of users suddenly lost access to the world’s largest video-sharing platform via both the mobile app and website.

Reports of the disruption quickly surged on internet monitoring sites and social media, indicating the issue was not an isolated technical glitch but a large-scale incident with global impact. The interruption was observed around 8 a.m. Jakarta time, when Indonesian users began reporting that the platform could not be accessed.

According to a statement posted on YouTube’s official X account, problems with the platform’s recommendation system prevented videos from appearing across several surfaces, including the homepage, the main app, YouTube Music and YouTube Kids. While the homepage had partially recovered, the company said it was still working on a full fix. Separate issues also prevented some users from logging in to YouTube TV. More than 8,000 service disruption reports were recorded, making the incident one of the most significant disruptions affecting a Google-owned service in recent months.

Users encountered various error messages when attempting to access content. Notifications such as “video unavailable” and “Something went wrong” appeared on both mobile and web versions, leaving the homepage blank without its usual video recommendations.

The Shorts section also failed to display content, while some Android TV users reported that the YouTube app could not open or crashed upon launch.

Not all features were completely disabled. Videos stored in viewing history or playlists remained playable for some users, and certain content could still be accessed through direct links or Google search results, even when unavailable from channel pages or the homepage. Some users still can access live streaming videos. Monitoring also indicated that YouTube Music continued functioning normally for many users, suggesting that not all parts of the platform’s infrastructure were affected simultaneously.

Data from Downdetector showed more than 320,000 YouTube disruption reports within a short period. Of these, about 56% of users reported being unable to access the website, 18% could not open the application and 15% experienced login failures. Internationally, reports surged in the United States with more than 317,000 complaints and in the United Kingdom with roughly 38,000. The disruption was first detected around 7:50 p.m. Eastern Time or 00:50 GMT, marked by a sharp spike in outage reports.

In Indonesia, complaints began rising at approximately 8:10 a.m. local time, with users primarily reporting server connection issues, inaccessible applications and video streaming failures.