WhatsApp sees sudden crash for users across the globe; is now back up and running

Why it matters to you

If you’ve been having issues using the typically reliable app, this might explain it.

WhatsApp went down on Wednesday, sending some of the app’s billion-plus users into a bit of a panic in the process. The popular Facebook-owned messaging service started having trouble early in the evening on the East Coast and, within an hour, representatives from the company confirmed to Reuters that it was working on a fix. The issue appears to have been resolved, according to the system status listed in the app’s settings.

The outage did not appear to affect every user — for what it is worth, we were able to send and receive messages just fine. However, problems were cropping up worldwide, if people’s reactions on Twitter are any indication.

The website Down Detector reported a spike of complaints about 4 p.m. (ET), which seemed to have trailed off shortly afterward. Most of the reports appear to have originated from Europe, indicating the region was particularly hit hard. For those affected, the problem was manifesting itself as a persistent “connecting” message appearing at the top of conversation windows. Some encountered similar problems using the web service as well.

Checking the system status during the outage produced the following message:

“Our service is experiencing a problem right now. We are working on it and hope to restore the functionality shortly. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

WhatsApp has a good track record of consistency and reliability, which makes Wednesday’s issues all the more strange. While it might not be a significant hindrance to American users, the app is particularly popular elsewhere in the world — especially in Brazil, India, Mexico, and Russia. WhatsApp seems to be better at transcending geographic borders than Facebook Messenger — though the success of either app is a win for the parent company.

On Tuesday, the app debuted a feature in its beta version that allows users to pin conversations to the top of their inbox.

We reached out to WhatsApp for clarification. As of now, everything appears to be peachy once again, with the status now reading “WhatsApp service is operating normally.”