Whatsapp and Instagram have been restored after Meta outage

Instagram and WhatsApp are now back online after a massive global outage that affected several Meta-owned apps on Wednesday.

Facebook has not yet confirmed whether all of its issues have been resolved.

“Thanks for bearing with us! We’re 99% of the way there – just doing some final checks. We apologize to those affected by the outage,” Meta, which owns the apps, said on X’s website.

More than 22,000 people reported issues with Facebook on Wednesday evening, while more than 18,000 people had difficulty using WhatsApp, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.

Issues have been reported with the apps in the UK, parts of Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, and the US.

“And we’re back, happy chatting!” WhatsApp on X said.

“We’re back, sorry for the wait, and thanks for bearing with us,” Instagram said.

The outages began around 18:00 GMT on Wednesday, according to Downdetector. Its numbers are based on reports of outages and the actual number of users affected may vary widely.

Shortly after users reported the issues, Meta said it was aware of a “technical issue” that was “impacting some users’ ability to access our apps” and said it was working to fix things as quickly as possible.

A variety of issues have been reported including not being able to use apps at all or feeds not updating for some users.

“We are aware of some issues with access to WhatsApp. We are actively working on a solution and are starting to see a return to normal for most people. We expect things to return to normal soon,” WhatsApp said around the same time.

Meta platforms are some of the most popular platforms in the world. Facebook has more than three billion monthly active users.

The biggest outage Meta has seen in 2021 was when founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the disruption that occurred.

On that occasion, Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram services were down for approximately six hours.