Update, July 14 (5:20 pm ET): Reports of WhatsApp outages have almost entirely ended, after over an hour of widespread problems.
What you need to know
- People all over the world are reporting a WhatsApp outage, starting around 4 p.m. ET.
- Biggest sources of issues are Europe and South America.
- There has been no word or confirmation from WhatsApp on the issue.
If you're having issues sending and receiving WhatsApp messages, you aren't alone. Users around the world are reporting outages with the service — including myself. A quick check of popular outage reporting site Downdetector shows a massive spike in reports of issues. Now, about an hour into the large spike in reports of WhatsApp issues, the reports have started to level off, indicating that WhatsApp has started to address the issue.
At least on Downdetector, the biggest number of reports of WhatsApp issues are in Europe and South America, though when you think about it that makes sense considering the large WhatsApp user base in both areas. But as more reports come in, it's clear this is a widespread issue beyond just those areas. There are fewer reports coming from Asia, but once again that makes sense considering it's the wee hours of the morning as of now.
At least in my case, WhatsApp is refusing to send and receive messages, and the WhatsApp website has forgotten my connected device. That's a pretty big outage — typically a smaller issue would simply result in delayed messages.
So, what can you do? Well, it's pretty much "wait and hope it comes back soon" — and use another messaging app for a while. You can always try force closing and reopening your app to re-establish a connection, but that's basically a shot in the dark. If the backend service is having issues, you're out of luck until WhatsApp figures things out on its end. When WhatsApp service does come back, you'll probably have to re-authenticate your WhatsApp web instance, since the secure connection will have been broken in the shuffle.
Update, July 14 (5:20 pm ET) — WhatsApp outages have been rectified after over an hour
Reports of issues with WhatsApp messages and the WhatsApp website have almost entirely disappeared, after over an hour of widespread problems around the world. Users report that messags are now sending and receiving without delay, and they are able to log back into WhatsApp Web.
