WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook are recovering from major outage

Instagram dark mode
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Instagram, WhatsApp Facebook and Facebook Messenger were down for millions of users today for approximately 30 minutes, with people complaining that they weren't able to access the suite of Facebook-owned social media platforms.

"We're sorry, but something went wrong. Please try again," said the Instagram app whenever we tried to access any part of the app. We're now able to refresh our feed of photos and videos, nor were we able to send messages.

WhatsApp was similar, with a 'Connecting' and circular icon near the top, and we saw the same sort of problems in the Facebook Messenger app. Messages didn't go out to our contacts for about a half hour.

Facebook has yet to comment on the issues, but there have been similar issues in the past that have seen all of these services suffer outages at the same time.

TechRadar has asked Facebook for a comment on what's happening, but we've yet to hear back. Without Facebook commenting officially, we haven't gotten confirmation on why its services went down or how many of its billions of users were affected.

Facebook apps down

Examples of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger right now (Image credit: Future)

We'll continue monitoring the four Facebook-owned services – which don't appear to be down any longer – in case your messages stop working again.

we could confirm that services were disrupted in the US and and the UK, while we saw a very large spike in complaints across the globe on DownDetector from all countries including Spain, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Russia.

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James Peckham

James is the Editor-in-Chief at Android Police. Previously, he was Senior Phones Editor for TechRadar, and he has covered smartphones and the mobile space for the best part of a decade bringing you news on all the big announcements from top manufacturers making mobile phones and other portable gadgets. James is often testing out and reviewing the latest and greatest mobile phones, smartwatches, tablets, virtual reality headsets, fitness trackers and more. He once fell over.

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