Did Your YouTube Watch History Suddenly Stop Working? Don’t Panic!

There are a lot of things to like about YouTube, but one of the most convenient features of the video-sharing platform is the fact that you can easily access your Watch History at all times. This is handy if you want to quickly pull up something you saw earlier to show it to a friend, or if you just feel like rewatching some old favorites. 

Plus, the content YouTube shows on your homepage is largely based on what you’ve already watched, so if you need to do any algorithm adjustments, you can do so by accessing your YouTube history. At least, you can when your YouTube history is actually working. Unfortunately, YouTube’s Watch History function appeared to stop working for a bit, and users were a bit miffed. Why did YouTube history stop working?

It didn’t take long for YouTube users to notice that YouTube’s Watch History feature had gone haywire. Many of them took to Twitter to try and figure out if other people were experiencing the same issues. 

“Is anyone having any problems with the @YouTube history page? Like, when you refresh to see what you recently (like, a second ago) watched, it just stays where it is?” one person wrote.

YouTube allows you to pause your video history at any time in case you don’t want certain videos showing up in your Watch History, but people clarified that they hadn’t intentionally turned off their watch history feature. It seemed as though the Watch History had somehow paused itself, which many users found pretty inconvenient.

Luckily, YouTube was quick to jump on the issue, and it looks as though they have been able to fix it so that everyone’s Watch History is back up and running as normal. 

“We were experiencing issues earlier today where Watch History was not updating for some of you – this has now been fixed!” they tweeted after the problem had been resolved.

Of course, as happens with most updates and bug fixes, there were still people saying their Watch History was broken. If you’re still experiencing issues with your Watch History, don’t panic! You probably just need to do a little bit of troubleshooting.

If you’re accessing YouTube via your phone, double-check to make sure that the app has been updated and is running the most recent version. If you’re still having Watch History issues and you’re sure you’re using the most recent version of the app, try uninstalling then reinstalling the app on your phone. Note: You may need to sign back into your account after you reinstall the app.

YouTube says that the issue is completely fixed, so those two troubleshooting tactics should solve any problems you’re having. If they don’t, though, it looks like YouTube’s Help Team is pretty responsive on Twitter — if the problem persists, that might be a good place to go for additional assistance. Hopefully, your Watch History is up and running and you can get back to watching (and/or revisiting) content in no time.