So this was weird: depending on the browser you’re using, your space bar may not have worked on the YouTube.com search bar for a while today. Pressing him would make absolutely nothing happen, so his searches on YouTube ended up being a long string of words. The bug seemed to last about an hour, based on when people started talking about it on Twitter, but as of 3:50 pm ET, the site appeared to be working correctly again on all browsers.
The bug affected the desktop site, but only browsers that are not based on Chrome. Firefox would not take up space on Windows, macOS or even Android if you requested the desktop version of the site. Safari on iPhones worked normally, but the problems came up with Safari on the iPad – probably because iPads also request the desktop site. Ordering the mobile version immediately fixed it there, and ordering the desktop site on an iPhone immediately made room.
The good news is that the lack of spaces probably hasn’t affected your YouTube experience much – it’s very good to understand your intent, even in long and relatively obscure searches with a lot of words together.
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There was also another one, manner most annoying bug: if you were trying to watch a video and type in the search bar at the same time, your keys would end up acting as shortcuts. Pressing the space bar would do nothing in the search bar, but it would pause your video. Your “T” can appear in the search bar, but it also changed my video to theater mode. This problem has also been fixed.
YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the problem now appears to be resolved. Wow!
March 10 update, 4:15 PM ET: Updated to reflect that the bug appears to have been fixed.