See when someone joins your watch party

A join is reported in two places: in the Watch Along panel, live, while you are looking at it, and, if you are the host, in your notification bell. Email and your phone stay out of it.

What changes the moment somebody arrives

1. The header count goes up. The panel is titled Watch Along followed by a live count, and it changes as people come and go.

2. The room stops saying you are alone. You're hosting and Nobody else is here yet become You're hosting and a line counting the people watching with you.

3. They appear under Watching now. The new arrival is listed with their name and the point they have reached in the video, shown as a timestamp, so you can see whether they are with you or still catching up.

4. A screen reader hears about it. The panel speaks Someone joined your party, or 2 people joined your party when several arrive at once. It is announced politely, so it waits its turn and never takes your focus away from whatever you were doing.

What the host gets in the bell

If you started the party, an arrival also becomes a notification, whether or not the panel is open in front of you:

• It reads like the roster does. The entry says something like Velvet Koala joined your watch party, using the same made-up name the panel shows. Someone whose seat has no name to show is reported as Someone joined your watch party.
• A rush of people is one entry, not ten. While the entry is still unread, further arrivals fold into it and it becomes 3 people joined your watch party. Once you have read it, the next arrival starts a fresh one.
• Opening it takes you back. Tapping the entry returns you to the video with the party running, which is the quick way back if you had wandered off.
• Only the host gets it. Riders are not told about each other, and nobody is ever notified about their own arrival.
• It tracks membership, like the spoken announcement does. Somebody who set themselves to Hidden still reaches you here under their mask name, even though they never appear in the Watching now list.

You can switch it off under Watch party arrivals in your notification settings, and the panel keeps reporting arrivals either way.

Who you will see, and what you will not

People arrive masked by default, so the list shows a made-up two-word name, not their account. That is true even for the host: you see your friend as something like Velvet Koala unless they choose to be Visible. Nothing in the roster, and nothing in the notification, reveals an email address or a real name on its own.

Somebody who set themselves to Hidden is in the party and can see everyone, but never appears in the Watching now list or the panel's header count. Their arrival still moves the line under You're hosting, which counts everyone in the party, and it is still announced, because both of those track membership rather than what people chose to show.

When someone goes quiet

Each person's browser checks in every few seconds while they are watching. If one stops, their row under In the party picks up an Away tag. It is a word beside their name, not a color, so it reads the same however you see the panel.

How fast the tag appears depends on how they left:

• They closed the tab, or the browser. Their browser hands the check-in back on the way out, so the row says Away almost at once.
• The tab is hidden, the phone went to sleep, or they wandered off to something else. Nothing announces itself; the check-ins simply stop, and the tag follows about a minute later.

One thing to know about where the tag lives: the In the party list is shown to whoever is holding the remote. If you have handed it to somebody else, you see who is driving instead, and the Away tags come back when you take the remote back.

Away is not gone. They keep their seat, you can still hand them the remote, and the tag clears itself the moment they come back to the tab. Nothing is announced when it changes, because a roster that spoke every time somebody glanced at their email would be unusable.

No email, no push

Worth being blunt about: the bell is as far as it goes. No email is sent when somebody joins, nothing is pushed to your phone, and riders get nothing at all. If you are waiting on people and would rather watch it happen:

• Leave the panel open on the video, rather than starting the party and switching tabs.
• Send the link before you start, so people are arriving while you are already watching.
• Use party chat to say hello. The Away tag tells you when somebody's browser has stopped checking in, but only a reply tells you they are reading.

What's next

• Invite a friend to a watch party covers getting the link to people in the first place.
• Watch Along is the tour of the rest of the panel, including chat and voice.

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