Is Stack Overflow Down? Live status & outage reports

Service info and troubleshooting

Page Won't Load or Times Out

If the site just spins or throws a 504 error, the issue is rarely on your end — but check your DNS first. Switch to 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1, flush the cache with ipconfig /flushdns on Windows or sudo dscacheutil -flushcache on Mac, then retry. Clearing browser cookies and cache for stackoverflow.com fixes a surprising number of loading issues too.

Login Errors and Locked Accounts

Stack Overflow delegates authentication to third-party providers — Google, GitHub, Facebook. If login fails, the problem is often with the OAuth handshake, not the site itself.

• Check that cookies and JavaScript are enabled in your browser
• Try a different auth provider if your primary one isn't responding
• Use an incognito window to rule out extension conflicts
• If you get a CAPTCHA loop, wait 10–15 minutes before retrying

Search Returns No Results or Wrong Ones

The built-in search indexes can lag after site updates. If a query that worked yesterday returns nothing today, try rephrasing with fewer filters or use site:stackoverflow.com directly in Google — it often gives more accurate results and bypasses index sync issues.

Images and Code Snippets Not Displaying

Broken images or missing syntax-highlighted code blocks usually mean a content delivery issue. Hard-refresh the page with Ctrl+Shift+R (or Cmd+Shift+R on Mac) and check whether an ad blocker is stripping resources from i.stack.imgur.com — that's where all uploaded images are hosted.

Editor Freezes While Writing a Question

The question editor is JavaScript-heavy. If it freezes mid-draft, the most common culprits are browser extensions interfering with the rich text component or too many tabs eating RAM.

• Disable extensions one by one to isolate the conflict
• Switch to a Chromium-based browser if you're on Firefox or Safari
• Save your draft text in a separate file before troubleshooting

Notifications Not Arriving

If inbox or achievement alerts stop showing up, go to your profile settings and confirm that notification preferences haven't been reset after a recent site update. Also check whether browser notification permissions for the domain are still granted.