YouTube outage empties sidebar and causes issues on TVs and game consoles

If you logged into YouTube today, you might have noticed something was wrong with the homepage: the sidebar that lets you access things like your subscriptions feed , trending videos, and the “Library” which keeps your Watch Later list and video history, is missing (although you can access some pages by clicking the links we’ve included). Other issues cut people out when trying to cast video to a smart TV or watch streams from a game console.

The account menu, which lets you switch accounts, manage settings, and view your channel, is also broken. You can still watch videos from your home or search page, but for people who like to carefully manage their YouTube experience or creators who aren’t logged into the right account, it’s a real pain. In my testing, the issues existed on both Safari and Chrome – and across different accounts.

YouTube says it is aware of the issue and is working on a fix. The company says it will share updates in a thread on its support site. The message currently reads:

If you’re currently having trouble using YouTube services on all your devices, we know that and are working to fix it!

Here’s what you might encounter:
Unable to sign in or switch accounts
Unable to cast to your TV or use the app on a game console
Left navigation menus and setting menus not appearing/loading
“No internet connection” error message when watching videos

Hopefully this happens soon. While a colleague of mine said the sidebar wasn’t really missing, some users (like me) and most creators will probably miss having easy access to hidden functions in currently broken menus.

Luckily, the YouTube app seems to work well on mobile, so there are always options to access your subscriptions and Watch Later list.