WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook are back up and running after outages

WhatsApp went down worldwide on Wednesday afternoon, impacting the 2 billion users of the messaging service. Users started experiencing issues connecting to WhatsApp in multiple countries just after 2PM ET today, with the service stuck on “connecting” for many.

Users can still send messages, but they weren’t delivered until WhatsApp came back online.

A status page for Meta’s business APIs was updated to note an outage impacting service on the APIs for connecting to WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram starting at 2:10PM ET.

As of 4PM ET, the issues seemed to be resolved for most of us in the US; and as of 4:45PM ET, the status page confirmed things should be fixed. The Verge contacted Meta about the issues, but we have not received a response yet.

For other Meta services like Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, many people were reporting issues trying to view recent posts or create new posts on the services, but now, those seem to be working consistently again.

This WhatsApp outage comes just weeks after a massive Meta outage locked users out of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads. The outage lasted around two hours but never impacted WhatsApp. It’s rare for WhatsApp to be affected by outages, with the last major outage taking the service offline for two hours in 2022.

Update April 3rd, 2:53PM ET: Added details on Facebook and Instagram issues.

Update April 3rd, 4:58PM ET: Noted access appears to be restored for some.

Update April 3rd, 5:17PM ET: Noted access appears to be restored for some.