Planned maintenance and Flickr downtime

Patterns of Life

May 24, 2019 update:

The Flickr website is up and stable, and it’s running faster than ever. As of 10:15pm PDT, we have just released the mobile apps. It can take up to 90 minutes for your app to receive the activation signal, so if you still see the downtime message, please be patient for just a bit longer. You don’t have to do anything to reactivate the app; just launch it to see when it’s ready for you.

Thanks for your patience! We’ll be continuing to monitor the site for stability throughout the weekend. Please check this Help Forum post for any ongoing updates.


May 23, 2019 update:

As of 8:15pm PDT, We’re back! It’s been a long process, but we’re switched over to AWS. Thank you so much for your patience! Please check this Help Forum post for ongoing updates.


As of 5:45am PDT, our team is still hard at work completing some final steps to bring the site back online — it’s taken a little bit longer than we hoped, but we expect to be up and running within the next several hours. Thank you for your patience!


It’s time to move:

It is an exciting time at Flickr right now as we approach the final stretch of our migration of Flickr’s data and systems. You may remember that one of the biggest steps we promised in revitalizing Flickr was to bring it increased speed and stability. Part of that process was re-engineering our underlying infrastructure and moving it all from Yahoo’s data centers and onto Amazon Web Services (AWS), where SmugMug’s photos have been kept safe and secure for years.

The process involves hundreds of millions of gigabytes of photos and videos (literally billions of photos) and 100+ million accounts. We knew there would be a few bumps in the road, and one of those unfortunate bumps is the need for some planned downtime while we finish the migration. Luckily though, when this step is complete, we’ll be well on our way to a much faster, much more secure, much more stable Flickr.

The details:

On May 22, 2019, Flickr will be down for planned maintenance for about 12 hours starting at 5pm PDT (that’s 8pm EDT or 12am GMT on May 23).

Your data, photos, videos, and settings will all be perfectly safe during this downtime. Once we are back online, you’ll have access to each and every item just as it was before. Also, all your photo rights will obviously continue to be protected and respected.

After the downtime:

After we come back online, you’ll be able to access your Flickr account, browse the feed, and explore Flickr just as you did before. However, because of the complexity of this migration, we do anticipate a few parts that may take a little bit more time to bring back online.

Camera Roll and push notifications may break. The website and mobile apps will provide alternative functionality while the Camera Roll is unavailable; things will look a little different, but you will still be able to access all your photos. On the mobile apps, you will be able to see your notifications after opening the app, but may not receive the notification pushed to your device. If you like, you may visit this link to turn on additional email notifications until push notification service is restored. We’ll be working hard to bring these features back online as fast as possible, but they may remain unavailable for a month or more.

You’ll need to re-download the Android app. Users who still have the old app will be able to continue to use it for now, but we’ll be discontinuing support and updates to it. We’ll release a new Android app around June 1 that will be available in the Google Play Store and will receive all new product features, updates and bug fixes, and continued support. This is necessary to transfer control over the app out of Yahoo’s developer account and into Flickr’s own account. iOS users get lucky here — we’re able to transfer that app out of Yahoo without the need for you to re-download.


We know this downtime is an inconvenience and we are infinitely grateful to each member of this amazing community for your support and patience as we chip away at this huge undertaking. We’re also thrilled that much of this work is behind us so we can continue putting more and more of our focus on building the features you’ve asked for.

If you want to follow along with the status of the downtime, you can visit our new Flickr Status page. And if you have any questions or concerns, our Support Heroes are available 24/7.

And one last note: To make this scheduled maintenance thing a little more fun, we’re planning a contest to get us all to step away from the computer, grab our cameras, and create. You can check out the details here. We can’t wait to see the view from behind your lens!