Millions of Snapchat users were left frustrated on Sunday as the popular multimedia messaging app experienced a widespread outage, disrupting services in Pakistan and several other countries.
The first reports of technical issues began surfacing early in the day, with users in major Pakistani cities including Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi, and Peshawar unable to access the app. The disruption was not limited to Pakistan; users in the UK, France, and other regions also reported similar issues, according to data from Downdetector—a platform that tracks service outages in real time.
Thousands Affected as Snapchat Experiences Major Service Disruption
Globally, the majority of users (57%) reported being unexpectedly logged out of their Snapchat accounts. Another 24% had trouble sharing content, while 18% faced difficulties uploading photos and videos. In Pakistan, the breakdown showed 53% of users were unable to open the app, 28% experienced issues with sharing, and 19% couldn’t upload as of 6 PM Sunday.
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Despite the scale of the disruption, Snapchat has not released an official explanation for the outage. Technology analysts suspect a possible server-side failure or a bug linked to a recent software update.
Snapchat Faces Global Outage, Users in Pakistan Among Those Affected
Interestingly, some users reported being able to bypass the issue by accessing Snapchat through a Virtual Private Network (VPN), suggesting that the disruption may be region-specific or tied to access restrictions from certain servers.
A heat map released by Downdetector showed major hotspots of reported outages across the globe, indicating that the problem was not isolated. The website only flags an outage when reported issues significantly exceed the normal baseline, which was clearly the case during this widespread disruption.