WhatsApp has crashed this afternoon, with thousands of users across the UK reporting issues.
DownDetector data shows the outage began around 3.10pm, with London hit hardest, though Manchester and Glasgow users are also experiencing significant disruption.
A staggering 68,000 issues have been logged since the outage began. Most users (59 per cent) can't send messages, while others face server connection problems (22 per cent) or app failures (19 per cent).
Meta, WhatsApp's parent company, has not yet publicly commented on the issue.
Frustrated users immediately took to X (formerly Twitter) to vent. One said: “Me running to X to see if WhatsApp is actually down or it's my network,” one user tweeted alongside a GIF of people rushing down an escalator.
Another added: “No need to switch flight mode on and off, whatsapp is indeed down.”
And one joked: “WhatsApp is down, and now X is the new customer care center. Everyone's here like: "Is it just me?" "Is it my WiFi?" "Did I forget to pay my internet bill?" No mate, we're all in this together refreshing X like it's a WhatsApp alternative!”
It comes four years after Meta's catastrophic seven-hour blackout that cost the tech giant an estimated $100million and forced engineers to physically visit data centres to restore service.
