Ride along

Ride along is watching together without a party. Tap someone who is watching the same video and hop onto their watching: your player follows them to whatever they play next, for as long as you ride. There is no invite, no seat, and nothing to set up.

Hopping on

Anywhere you can see who is watching, you can ride along. On a computer, tap a face in the row above the video and you get both choices, jump to their spot or ride along. On any device, tap a face or a cluster of faces on the receipt timeline and the small panel that opens above it offers the same pair, one row per person when several share a spot. The roster rows offer it too: on a computer they live in the People room of the Watch Along column; on a phone held upright they are the People card of the Watch Along panel, and with the phone sideways they are the People rows of the panel that slides in beside the video. Pick someone and you are riding.

The ride is not always on offer, and the two cases you will actually meet are worth knowing. Someone already in a watch party keeps the plain one-tap jump, because a party has absorbed them and a ride would be refused anyway. And you need to be signed in yourself: signed out, the row above the video shows you who is watching, but the faces are only for looking at. Being seated in a party yourself also sets the ride aside; leaving the party brings it back.

If ride along is unavailable for that person, you get a short, plain message. We keep the reason to ourselves on purpose, so that a refusal never reveals anything about them.

An older watching session may need to refresh before someone can ride along. Moving to another video refreshes presence. If you have just linked or changed your account, finish signing in before trying to join a party or start a ride. Your earlier guest session cannot start a new ride after the account changes. You can still hop off or shake off your riders.

A ride is not a follow, and the roster rows offer both. Beside the ride you will find Follow on someone appearing as themselves, or Ask to follow on someone Masked. A ride lasts as long as you stay on it; a follow outlives it. See Follow requests for how asking works.

While you are riding

A small chip shows who you are riding with, whether you are in sync, and a heart. The heart sends a little wordless appreciation, and you can tap it whenever a moment deserves it. On a computer the chip sits in the row above the video and in the Watch Along column. On a phone it sits in the band between the video's timeline and the row of panel names, whichever panel you are reading, and again at the top of the People card, or of the panel beside the video when the phone is sideways. When the person you are riding moves on, the band alone carries the prompt, Follow and Hop off, and the card chip steps aside until you have answered. Wherever the chip shows, Hop off is on it.

When the person you are riding moves to a new video, you get a prompt asking whether to come along. Follow takes you there and keeps the ride going. Hop off ends the ride and leaves you where you are. Do nothing and the ride stays open: your player stays put, the prompt waits, and if they move on again it asks about the new video instead; if they go offline in the meantime, the ride ends quietly. Every new video asks again. A ride never moves you anywhere on its own.

The ride ends gently if they go offline, if either of you joins a watch party, or if either of you blocks the other. You can hop off at any time, and so can they.

When someone rides you

You see how many people are riding along and never who. You feel the appreciation they send as a count, never as messages, and never attached to a person.

When that appreciation clusters, you alone get a quiet nudge suggesting you start a watch party with the people riding with you. Accepting invites all of them; each one still chooses whether to join and how they appear. Ignoring it lets the nudge fade, and nobody ever learns it appeared.

One tap shakes everyone off if you would rather watch alone.

Letting people ride along

A setting, Let others ride along, controls whether anyone can hop on. It is on by default and sits with your visibility choices and in your account settings.

Hidden always wins. If you are Hidden, nobody can ride you, whatever the setting says, because a Hidden watcher is not there to be found.

Your privacy while riding

A ride is a private channel between the two of you. Nobody else can see that you ride anyone, and there is no public record of who follows whom. Someone you ride while they are Masked stays masked for the whole ride, so following them across videos never tells you who they are.

The one honest thing a ride does share is the point of the feature: while you ride, you see what that person watches next.

Ride along and watch parties

The word "ride" belongs to this feature. Inside a watch party, the people watching with you are simply "watching with you", and the party's controls are its own. Joining a party ends any ride in progress on either side, so the two never overlap.

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