So it’s weird: depending on the browser you use, your space bar may not have worked in the YouTube.com search bar for a while today. If you click on it, absolutely nothing will happen, and your YouTube searches ended up being one long series of words. The bug seems to exist for an hour, based on when people started tweeting about it, but from 15:50 ET, the site seems to be working properly in all browsers again.
The error affected the desktop’s site, but only browsers that are not based on Chrome. Firefox does not take up spaces in Windows, macOS or even Android if you request the desktop version of the site. Safari on iPhones worked normally, but the issues appeared on Safari on iPad – probably because iPads also request the site for the desktop. The demand for the mobile version immediately fixed it, and the desktop site requested on an iPhone, immediately broke spaces.
The good news is that the lack of spaces has probably not affected your YouTube experience much – it’s very good to understand your intent, even with long, relatively obscure searches with a bunch of words breaking down.
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There was another, manner more annoying error: if you try to watch a video and enter the search bar at the same time, your keystrokes will eventually act as shortcuts. Pressing the space bar will not do anything in the search bar, but it will interrupt your video. Your “T” may appear in the search bar, but it also turned my video into theater mode. This issue has also been resolved.
YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the problem now seems to be fixed. Whew!
Update March 10, 16:15 ET: Updated to indicate that the error appears to have been fixed.