X was down – here's what happened in the latest major outage

Let the doomscrolling recommence

It looks like X's latest outage is now officially over – the reports on Downdetector have now dropped to baseline levels and it's working smoothly for us at TechRadar, too.

I'll be monitoring for aftershocks, but it looks like we can all get back to watching gifs and arguing with strangers on the internet.

Moving in the right direction

Good news for fans of freshly cooked hot-takes and memes – X appears to be back online after an outage that last for over an hour.

The number of reports on Downdetector has plummeted to just over 8,000 in the US, and a little over 2,000 in the UK. Given there's usually a slight delay between Downdetector reports and reality, I'd say the issue is now largely fixed for most (including me).

There's been no official post saying what caused the outage and everyone is now posting like nothing happened. Including the fact that Apple has just announced a special event for March 4 in New York...

The error messages continue

The number of Downdetector reports for X is continuing to drop, which is a promising sign – it's now down to just over 25,000 reports in the US, from a peak of just over 41,000 at 8.42am ET / 1.42pm GMT.

Yet many of us are continuing to get error messages, so I thought I'd bring you one I haven't seen before to tide us over. The one above in the Android app explains that posts can't be retrieved and to "please try again later".

Seeing as X is making a habit of going down these days, I might start collecting these error messages and start a bingo game.

X isn't exactly flourishing

Seeing as X is still down for most of us right now, it feels timely to mention another recent X problem that had a somewhat comical conclusion.

As reported by Futurism, many users were recently puzzled to discover that the site's dark blue 'dim' theme had disappeared. When they complained on X (when the site was working), X’s head of product Nikita Bier replied that "we don’t have the capacity to support more than two colors right now", but that "we are looking into lightening the black on web.”

Leaving aside that baffling reply, is today's outage related to X's promised color tweaks? No, but it is another amusing X anecdote that suggests the site isn't exactly firing on all cylinders right now. In fact, none of its cylinders are firing, because it's still very much down right now...

Signs of progress?

There's been a small dip in the number of Downdetector reports for X in the last 15 minutes or so. It's now down to just over 37,000 reports, from a high of 42,845 at 8.34am ET / 1.34pm GMT.

It still isn't working for me at the time of writing with the desktop site showing a black screen, but that could mean a fix is working for some regions.

If you're in the US and are looking for something to replace your daily doomscroll, I'd recommend checking out our pick of the Presidents' Day deals. They're more fun than looking at a black screen, anyway.

The reports continue to spike

Our hopes that this might be a short, sharp blip appear to be fading – reports of problems on X continue to grow, with the number now at a massive 41,000 in the US. It's down for thousands in the UK too, during the critical lunch hour doomscroll period.

During the site's last big outage in November 2025, Cloudflare issues were the culprit. However, that doesn't seem to be case so far this time, with some outage spikes on Downdetector for both Cloudflare and AWS very minor. The picture should hopefully become clearer soon.

Where do we go now?

Unfortunately, one of the best places to go for information during major outages is still... X. And it obviously isn't possible to contact the @Support account either.

Many users are using the Downdetector comments section as a place of refuge, with many stating that (like us) no posts are showing and neither are profile pages. Let's hope that 'retry' button starts working soon...

A quiet day on X

If you're seeing the message above for X on desktop or in the mobile app, you're not alone.

The social media site appears to be experiencing a big Monday outage, with the reports of issues in the US now at over 40,000 on Downdetector.

That's the kind of number we haven't seen since its last big outage in November 2025. Let's hope for the sake of memes and hot-takes that this one doesn't last as long...

That's a big spike

It seems most people (including us) are struggling to get X to load right now – there's currently over 23,000 reports on Downdetector (above) in the US, and over 6,400 in the UK.

The outage is affecting both the app and website, with neither working for us. We're getting a "something went wrong" message, with no posts loading.