GitHub Is Down, but There's a Fix
If you're struggling to access GitHub this morning, you aren't alone.
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Jake Peterson Senior Technology Editor
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Jake Peterson is Lifehacker’s Tech Editor, and has been covering tech news and how-tos for nearly a decade. His team covers all things technology, including AI, smartphones, computers, game consoles, and subscriptions.
August 17, 2026
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Key Takeaways
If you're struggling to access GitHub this morning, you aren't alone. GitHub appears to be down for users across the internet. Downdetector shows tens of thousands of user reports as of Monday morning. GitHub issued a fix at 12:36 p.m. ET, but says interruptions may continue as it rolls out.Table of Contents
If you're trying (and failing) to access GitHub Monday morning, you aren't alone. According to Downdetector, the hosting provider has over 15,000 user reports indicating issues or downtime with the service—up from roughly 3,000 reports when I first published this article. Whether you're a developer trying to update your repository, or you're a user trying to access one, GitHub may give you trouble. Luckily, the outages should be over soon.
GitHub officially confirmed the outage through multiple updates to its status page. However, in the latest update at 12:36 p.m. ET, the company confirmed it fixed the issue: "We identified the problematic component and have taken corrective actions. There are strong signs of recovery but we are still working to completely restore service, with error rates still remaining slightly elevated. We will post further updates as recovery continues." As such, you might still see issues with GitHub as the fix rolls out.
GitHub hasn't identified the exact issue yet. At 12:16 a.m. ET, GitHub posted an update that reads: "We are experiencing high error rates around 20% for web experiences and api traffic. Archive downloads and raw repository content downloads are experiencing an approximate 50% error rate. SAML and OIDC authentication, SCIM, and Team Sync are also impacted. We are still working to identify the root cause and will continue to post updates as we learn more and perform mitigation."
What do you think so far?
If the comments on Downdetector are any indication, this is not the first time GitHub has had service issues. One comment reads: "Cmon [GitHub] get your sh*t together...this is getting old." (The user added their own asterisks.) Scrolling through the comment history, users reported errors one or twice a week throughout August. I'm not a regular GitHub user, so I can't attest personally to repeated downtimes, but it does seem as though this isn't wholly unusual. If you're still experiencing issues with GitHub, expect service to come back online shortly—assuming nothing catastrophic is happening behind the scenes.
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