Instagram is still down for users as iPhone and Android app fails to load timeline

Instagram is still down for some users. Instagram users first started to flood social media with reports that the hugely-popular photo-focused smartphone app was not working more than 24 hours ago. Starting yesterday morning, a growing number of iPhone and Android smartphone owners complained about issues refreshing their timeline – with some apps only showing a blank feed, no matter how many times users pulled-down to refresh. Meanwhile, others have been left unable to watch Instagram Stories, answer Direct Messages, or check their Activity tab, which brings together a summary of the latest comments, likes, and new followers. Essentially, all those impacted by the outage can do is check their own images.

Confused social media users have talked about checking their Wi-Fi router, switching to 4G mobile data, and force-closing the Instagram app to try to bring back the functionality – all to no avail. The first reports of problems started to trickle online around 8.42am on Tuesday morning, with hundreds of reports slowly growing throughout the day and still being churned out by frustrated users hours later today. This is far from the first time that Instagram has suffered troubles… but this certainly seems like one of the most prolonged outages in a while.

The Facebook-owned social network has yet to confirm exactly why some users are having trouble accessing the service for the last few days, but if the timeline of people on Twitter complaining about the problem is anything to go by, it seems pretty widespread. According to some unconfirmed reports by Instagram users, the issues really started to flare-up following an update to the app on iOS and Android. Instagram did push out a new version of its app to the App Store two days ago, which was designed to bring “bug fixes and performance improvements” to the service. However, we’ll need to wait for confirmation to see whether this new version of the app is to blame. 

DownDetectors, an independent service that trawls mentions across social networks to determine when web apps and online services, like Instagram, are down for users, has reported hundreds of reports from users every minute. At the latest count, some 700 Instagram users were complaining about problems seeing photos and videos on the service.

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Instagram Stories, which appear for 24-hours before vanishing (unless saved to their profile), also appeared to be impacted by this latest issue, with users screenshotting blank images when trying to view the latest photo or video shared by friends, celebrities or influencers they follow on the social media service.

Using the geolocation data stored by social networks, DownDetector is able to show the volume of users in each region of the UK, as well as nations worldwide. At the moment, the issues impacting Instagram appear to be centred around the UK and North America. However, there are some reports in mainland Europe, too.

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Writing on Twitter, users voiced their frustration with the service being offline – with some unable to access Instagram for hours now. One posted: “Instagram has not worked for almost 6 hours, I deleted it from my device, I restarted my phone, I deactivated my internet but it still works like that. Someone else? Does someone know how to solve this problem?”

Another posted a screenshot of a blank Activity tab, with the loading symbol endlessly twirling, writing: “What’s happening to @instagram? It’s down for me whole day…”

Meanwhile, one Twitter user joked about the outage, “Maybe this is a sign I need to focus on other stuff #instagramdown”

• We’ll keep you updated about the outage. Please refresh this webpage for the most up-to-date information.