On a normal Tuesday morning, Hulu’s Apple device apps could crash for a few hours, and few would notice.
But during the pandemic, a few missed hours of video streaming equate to serious appliance failure—like the refrigerator, the air conditioner or—gasp!—the internet itself not working for a few hours.
During a six-hour window, starting at around 4 a.m. CST Tuesday, and peaking in mid-morning with over 3,500 hourly complaints on Down Detector, the Hulu app for iPhones and Apple TV devices experienced playback problems.
The outage was notable enough to make a #HuluDown hashtag trend on Twitter for several hours, with users—their sleep disrupted by social distancing—taking to social media to rant. “Hulu really decided to have a breakdown when I want to watch my shows now what am I supposed to do? Sleep?” tweeted one bereft user.
On Reddit, users described being advised to wait for an app update, suggesting something was changed at the server level before a new app iteration could be rolled out.
By late morning, the skies had cleared and the disruption was gone.
“Sorry for the interruption! We’re currently investigating this issue with a high priority, and we hope to have a fix in place soon. Thanks a bunch for your patience!,” Hulu’s official support account tweeted.
