WhatsApp’s biggest outage has been resolved, but Meta doesn’t say what broke

After a fairly significant period of outage, instant messenger WhatsApp is now back in action.

The Meta owned WhatsApp messenger’s troubles began around noon, and was widespread, with users unable to unable to send or receive new messages or make voice and video calls.

Meta confirmed to HT that the issue with the instant messenger has since been identified and resolved, and the service has resumed globally.

However, Meta did not clarify if this was a repeat of the configuration issue with their servers, something that had led to a major outage of the platform’s apps in October last year. At that time, Instagram as well as Messenger and Facebook Workplace had also suffered outages.

WhatsApp was unavailable for users for about two hours, making this the longest outage the service has faced.

The fix however took time to have an impact, as online platform Downdetector data indicates complaints from users only slowed down an additional hour later.

Meta’s other platforms, including Facebook, Messenger and Instagram, remained unaffected with the troubles plaguing WhatsApp.

It wasn’t just the mobile apps for Android phones and the Apple iPhone which weren’t working.

The outage extended to WhatsApp Web apps as well, while certain settings within WhatsApp remained unavailable, including status and privacy settings.

WhatsApp is by far the most popular instant messaging app globally.

Research firm Statista pegs the user base, as of June, at 2.66 billion active users. WeChat follows in a distant second place, with 1.26 billion active users – it has however overtaken Meta’s own Facebook Messenger app, which now has 988 million active users.

WaBetaInfo, a platform that tracks developments with WhatsApp, had earlier suggested the specifics of the outage. “The issue is server-side, so we have to wait for a fix remotely,” they said, in an update.

Meta has not confirmed exactly what caused the outage with WhatsApp’s services today.