Snapchat is down — and it probably isn't alone! [Update]

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By Oliver Haslam
last updated

Apple iPhone with Snapchat
Apple iPhone with Snapchat (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • Users are reporting issues signing into Snapchat.
  • Amazon Web Services may be suffering another outage.

Update, December 11 (04:30 am ET): Amazon confirms that AWS did not suffer an outage and this issue was purely a Snapchat one.

Update, December 10 (04:20 pm ET): Snapchat says that it has resolved the issue.

A ton of Snapchat users are reporting that they can't get the photo and video-sharing service to work, with Downdetector reporting problems from around 08:30 EST. It isn't immediately clear whether Snapchat is the only service impacted, but it seems unlikely given the number of web-wide failures we've seen of late.

The last time we saw a similar outage it was caused by an Amazon Web Services (AWS) failure, and sure enough, AWS has its own problems — again according to Downdetector. However, at the time of writing the AWS health dashboard does not report any issues at all.

Some of the iMore team have reported that they are able to use Snapchat just fine, suggesting this could be a regional issue and that not everyone is currently being impacted by whatever's afoot. Something is definitely not right this morning, however.

Snapchat Aws Outage Screenshot

Snapchat Aws Outage Screenshot (Image credit: Downdetector)

Snapchat is one of the best iPhone apps at what it does — making it easy and quick to share disappearing content online. It doesn't tend to suffer from too many outages except those caused by the services it's hosted on. Whether it's an AWS outage or something related to a DNS provider like Google or Cloudflare, things can often fail without the service or app being at fault.

We'll be keeping our eyes peeled to see if anything else starts to suffer, but if you're trying to get Snapchat to work now might be a good time to check out the competition. I hear Instagram is pretty popular these days.

Update, December 10 (4:20 pm ET) — Snapchat says that it has resolved the issue.

In an update from the Snapchat Support account on Twitter, the company says that it has resolved the issue:

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.