Instagram was down — here's what happened and who it affected

Instagram app logo on a phone display.

Instagram was down, as thousands of users are reporting a service outage on Down Detector.

At around 12:08pm ET / 5:08pm GMT, users started reporting issues with the app and website. After our own testing and seeing other user outage reports, it seems that the desktop website was the only service affected.

But now, the service is back up and running correctly. Here are the updates as it happened.

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That's a big outage spike

(Image credit: Down detector)

If you're experiencing issues with Instagram, you're not the only one. At the time of writing, 2,689 users have reported an outage is happening.

Everyone rushing to X to see if Instagram is down pic.twitter.com/H8FHWK9NlvNovember 12, 2025

We're currently looking through user reports and comments, while testing Instagram for ourselves to see what's going wrong.

So far, we're seeing some weirdness on the desktop version of Instagram.

This looks like it's desktop-focused

Instagram down bc pic.twitter.com/aMC3FhU8amNovember 12, 2025

We're seeing more users sharing their experiences, which are similar to my own testing. It looks the feed is not loading on desktop, but on the smartphone app, it seems to be fine.

May have just been a blip?

(Image credit: Down detector)

Whatever these service issues are with Instagram on desktop, it looks as if a fix may have been implemented, as the spike is quickly tapering off at just over 1,000 user reports.

The outage looks to be over

Well, that was quick! The desktop site for Instagram is working for us again, and the number of user outage reports has dropped down to 234 at the time of writing — much closer to the expected average.