Watch Along
See who else is watching, press play together in a watch party, and chat while you watch.
Watch Along turns a video from a solo tab into a shared room. You can see the other people watching the same video on the timeline, choose how you appear, start a watch party so a group presses play together, and chat while you watch.
In this section
- Party chat covers chatting and reacting in a watch party, how you stay private while you do it, slow mode, and how to report a message.
- Party voice, captions, and camera covers listening and talking out loud, live captions, the stage, camera in a private party, and the one-time age check.
- Ride along covers hopping onto someone else's watching and following them from video to video, without a party.
- Follow requests covers asking to follow someone you only saw behind a mask, and choosing who gets to follow you back.
The basics
- Live watchers. When other people are on the same video, small avatars ride the receipt timeline at the spot each person has reached. You are Masked by default, so the crowd is visible without your identity being on show.
- How you appear. Choose Masked (a nameless disguise), Visible (your persona), or Hidden (you see everyone, no one sees you). You can change it at any time, and switching back to Masked leaves no trace of who you were.
- Your mask is a little character. A Masked watcher shows a playful generated face instead of a plain dot. The face is drawn from your mask, so it stays the same everywhere you appear in a video without ever revealing who you are. In a voice party the mask's mouth moves along while you talk, on the dock speaker tiles and the stage; on the timeline it stays a calm face with a speaking glow.
- Following someone you met here. Each row in the People list carries a Follow if that person is appearing as themselves, or an Ask to follow if they are Masked. Asking sends a request they can accept or decline, and Follow requests covers what each side sees.
- Watch parties. Start a party on any video and the people who join follow your play, pause, and seek. Before you start, the Who can join row under the button decides the door: everyone, your followers, your friends, one of your groups, or invite only. Share the party with a link or its QR code, hand the remote around, and let Surprise us pick the next video.
- You stay in a party until you leave it. Reloading the page, closing the tab and coming back, or wandering off to browse all keep your seat. A small pill says which party you are in and who you are watching with, and opens the panel again when you press it. If the host moved to another video while you were away, a card says so with one Follow button; nothing moves you until you press it.
- Made for kids. Watch Along never appears on videos marked as made for kids.
Where to find it
Watch Along takes a different shape on a computer, on a phone held upright, and on a phone turned sideways. Everything below is the same room either way; only the way you reach it changes.
Open Watch Along from the Watch Along control in the row of buttons under the video. It opens as a column beside the video, with a People, Chat and Voice rail across the top and a gear for My watch party. The header keeps the live count, the roster strip stays put whichever room you are in, and your own visibility control is pinned along the bottom.
Switching rooms never drops a connection. Voice keeps running while you read the chat, and the Chat pill grows a dot when a message arrives while you are elsewhere.
Hold your phone upright and the panels under the video are a row of counted pills: Receipts, then Tray and Queue when you have them, then Comments, then Watch Along at the end. Tap the Watch Along pill or swipe across to it. The row steps aside while you scroll down a panel, along with the play controls under the video. Scroll back up and both return, as does reaching them with a keyboard. The row also slips away after about six seconds of stillness; tap the small handle it leaves behind to bring it back.
Inside, Watch Along is a row of full-height cards: Chat and Voice while a party has them, then People, then You, where you set how you appear. Swipe between cards, or tap their names in the slim row under the header, which keeps the live count. Each card gets the whole panel to itself, so nothing sits squeezed under anything else. While you are on another card, the Chat tab counts the messages you have not seen, the Voice tab says LIVE while your own mic is on, and the People tab carries the party count. Voice keeps running whichever card you are reading.
Turn the phone sideways and the video goes full width. Two counted chips sit in the bar above it, Receipts and Watch Along. Tap one and its panel slides in beside the video, which keeps playing the whole time. Sideways there are no cards; the panel is one column you read top to bottom, from the live count down to You. Tap the lit chip again, or press Escape, to send it away. The Back control, the video's title and the small pill beside them, holding Surprise me and the heart, fade after about three seconds of stillness; the chips stay put so you never lose your way back.
Mask avatar credits
The mask faces are built with DiceBear:
- "Fun Emoji" avatar style by Davis Uche, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- "Big Smile" avatar style by Ashley Seo, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- "Bottts" avatar style by Pablo Stanley, free for personal and commercial use.
Related
Invite a friend to a watch party
Open the video, click Watch Along, and click Start a watch party. The panel shows a QR code, a short vdr.fyi link, and a Copy link button. Send your friend that link and they land on a join screen, signed in or not, and press play with you.
Host a private watch party
Set Who can join before you start. Invite only takes the party off the public surface and lets in anyone holding the link. Followers, Friends and A group go further: they check every arrival at the door, so even someone with the link is turned away unless they belong. Everyone is the open party, and Invite only is what a fresh picker starts on.
See when someone joins your watch party
The panel tells you as it happens: the header count goes up, the new watcher appears under Watching now with their mask name and playhead, and a screen reader hears Someone joined your party. If you are the host, the arrival also lands in your notification bell, so a party you walked away from still reaches you.
How do I watch YouTube together with friends?
Five things work today: a sync extension like Teleparty, an Activity inside a Discord call, a web room like Watch2Gether or Kosmi, a phone app like Rave, or a watch party here, where a link puts everyone on the same play, pause and seek. YouTube's own peer feature, live sharing in Google Meet, is Android only and is being withdrawn.
Last updated on