YouTube’s search bar was spacing out in many web browsers yesterday

So this was a weird one: depending on the browser you’re using, your space bar may not have worked in the YouTube.com search bar for a little while yesterday. Pressing it would make absolutely nothing happen, so your YouTube searches ended up being one long string of words. The bug seemed to be around for an hour, based on when people started sounding off about it on Twitter, but as of 3:50PM ET, the site appeared to be working correctly again on all browsers.

The bug affected the desktop site, but only browsers that aren’t based on Chrome. Firefox wouldn’t take spaces in Windows, macOS, or even Android if you requested the desktop version of the website. Safari on iPhones worked as normal, but the problems showed up on Safari on iPad — probably because iPads request the desktop site, too. Asking for the mobile version immediately fixed it there, and requesting the desktop site on an iPhone immediately broke spaces.

The good news is that the lack of spaces probably didn’t affect your YouTube experience much — it’s very good at understanding your intent even on long, relatively obscure searches with a bunch of words smashed together.

There was also another, way more annoying bug: if you were trying to watch a video and type in the search bar at the same time, your keystrokes would end up acting as shortcuts. Pressing the space bar wouldn’t do anything in the search bar, but it would pause your video. Your “T” might show up in the search bar, but it also switched my video into theater mode. This issue is also fixed.

YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the issue now appears to be fixed. Whew!

Main Image: Reddit