Samsung TVs are coming back online after apps stopped working

Samsung smart TVs appear to be functioning normally again after experiencing a global outage yesterday. Users across Reddit and Samsung’s community forum started reporting issues with their TVs at around 5PM ET on Thursday, finding themselves unable to open apps like YouTube, Apple TV, Hulu, and Prime Video.

While apps were still visible on the Samsung TV menu, attempting to open them would display a variety of error messages, such as those related to server maintenance, certification errors, and lost connectivity. Many users found that Netflix was unaffected by the outages, which uses its own content delivery network — suggesting that the issues were connected to the servers used by other streaming apps.

The cause of the outage is currently unclear, however, and Samsung has not publicly acknowledged the issues on its website or social channels. We have reached out to Samsung for more information. 

One Redditor claimed to get a response from Samsung support, saying the company was “aware of a potential disruption of service on your Samsung TV,” and that its engineers were attempting to restore service “as soon as possible.” The issues appeared to be widespread, with Samsung TV users across multiple countries reporting that they were locked out of their apps.

Whatever caused it, several users are now seeing a return to normal operation. For anyone still experiencing issues, some users have reportedly managed to regain access to their apps by pressing the power button on their Samsung TV remote until the device restarts.