UPDATE: Snapchat has confirmed that users are struggling with the app and state they are working on a fix.

In a post on social media, the chat app said: "We're aware many Snapchatters are experiencing crashing on the app. We're looking into it and working on a fix!"

Despite being down since around 6pm tonight the app continues to face major issues with fans still unable to access the service.

A post on Twitter at 10:40pm from one frustrated user said: "My snapchat crashes down everytime I try to open it... somebody else got the same problem?"

ORIGINAL STORY: Snapchat is down right now with the popular selfie app not working for thousands of users.

Snapchat fans have reported issues of the app crashing when trying to open the service on smartphones.

Independent website Down Detector has received hundreds of reports that Snapchat is down.

The outage tracker monitors social mentions around certain topics to detect outages across the world.