The waiting room for a booked party

A party booked for later does not start with a video. Fifteen minutes before its start time, the link to the booking turns into a way in, and behind it is a waiting room: the people already there, the videos lined up, a chat, and a room you can hear each other in. Nothing plays yet. When the party starts, the waiting room hands over to it.

An older party link opens the same booking page. It does not change who can see the invitation or join: a party for named guests still requires your own invitation, and you must accept it before entering.

Booking a party

A party for later starts where a party now does. Open the video, open Watch Along, and pick Later above the button: it becomes Pick a time, and that opens the form. You give the party a name, a date and a time in your own zone, say who can come, line up what plays, and invite people by name. One Book the party at the end.

The time is read in the zone shown beside it, so a party booked for 8:00 PM in London is 8:00 PM in London whoever books it. Book at least thirty minutes ahead and no more than ninety days out. On the night the clocks go back, a time that happens twice asks you which one you meant before it will save.

On a phone the same form arrives as a sheet from the bottom. The name and the one-line summary stay at the top, the sections scroll between them, and Book the party stays above the keyboard while you type.

Changing it later is the same form with Save the changes at the foot, and everyone you invited keeps their place. If a guest has put a video forward, it waits in Suggestions from your guests at the bottom of What plays, with Accept and Reject beside it.

Your parties in one place

Your dashboard carries a Watch Along tab with every party that concerns you on it. If booking parties is switched off for your account the tab is still there and says so rather than showing you an empty list. Invitations holds the ones waiting on your answer. Coming up holds what you are hosting and what you have said yes to, soonest first, each card marked You're hosting or You're invited. A card gives you the start time in your own zone, who the party is open to, and how many videos are lined up.

An invitation is answered where it sits. Accept moves it into Coming up, Decline takes it off the list, and a declined invitation does not come back here. Either way a line above the two lists says what happened.

On a party you are hosting, Edit opens the booking form you filled in and Cancel asks you to confirm before it calls the party off and tells everyone who was coming. Both stand while the party is ahead of its waiting room and while that room is open. Once it is live the card offers the way in and nothing else, because a party that has begun is past changing.

Which way in a card offers depends on where the party is: See the party page until the waiting room opens, Open the lobby for the fifteen minutes before the start, Join live while it is running. A party that was called off, that is over, or that could not start says so and offers nothing. Book a party at the top opens the same form Pick a time does on a video, and Load more brings in the next page when there is one.

What was watched

Past parties holds the parties that already happened, newest first, and keeps them for ninety days. A party that is over is here, and so is one that was called off or could not start once its time has gone by, each saying which it was.

A party that actually ran carries one more thing: Receipts from this party. Open it and the receipts written while the party was on are underneath, the ones you can still see. Each is a line with the start of what it says, who wrote it and where in the video it sits, and selecting it takes you to that video at that moment.

You see exactly what you would see anywhere else. A receipt that has been deleted, one on a feed you have left, and one moderation has taken back are simply not in the list, with nothing standing in their place and no count of what is missing. A party that was called off or never started offers nothing to open, because nothing was written during it.

Load more receipts sits under the list when a party has more than a page of them, and goes once the last of them is in.

Getting in

Open the party link and you land on the booking page. From fifteen minutes before the start, its button reads Open the lobby and takes you into the waiting room, as long as you are signed in and the party is one you can join: anyone, on a party that is open to anyone or to anyone with the link, and on an invitation-only party, the people who were invited by name and have accepted. If you were invited and have not answered yet, the button waits for your answer.

Nothing about entering touches your microphone. Hearing the room is a button you press once you are in, and speaking is a second one.

An invitation-only party is private to its host and the people invited by name. A pending invitation lets you see the booking; accept it before entering the waiting room. Forwarding its link does not invite somebody else. Only parties the host marks public appear in public discovery; link-only and named parties stay unlisted.

Waiting as the host

Before the time you booked, the Start the party button says when you can press it. The line under it says when the party starts on its own if you do not, which is five minutes after the booked time.

Starting the party

From the booked time the button works. Press it once and the party begins: the waiting room stops taking new messages, everybody in it sees that it has started, and the party opens on the first video in the queue. The button says Starting… while that happens, and a second press does nothing.

You do not have to press it. Five minutes after the booked time the party starts on its own, and it is the same party either way: the same room, the same queue, the same link. If you press it at the same moment the automatic start happens, you still get one party rather than two.

The link you shared never changes. The address that showed the booking, and then the waiting room, is the one the running party will be reached from.

Press Join the room to hear whoever is already talking. As the host, you can also take a mic seat when your account is eligible. It starts at Mic off. Turning it on uses the same age, plan, consent and browser-permission checks as other voice rooms.

Waiting as an invited guest

Invited by name and accepted, you can take a mic seat as soon as you join the room, and you can put a video forward for the queue while you wait. The host decides whether it goes in; the count under the form says how many of yours are waiting on them, up to ten.

The mic control works the way it does in a party: it reads Mic off until you turn it on, your browser asks for the microphone the first time, and the same one-time age question and headphones note apply. Leave voice keeps your place in the room and stops the sound.

On a public party, before the host arrives

On a party anyone can join, or anyone with the link, the room's voice stays shut until the host is in it. The Room says so, and offers nothing to press until that changes.

Once the host arrives, the room opens on the next check, within about half a minute, and Join the room appears where the sentence was.

When the party starts

The header says the party has started, the chat becomes read-only so the conversation stays readable and stops changing, and voice in the waiting room closes. The waiting room learns this from the room itself rather than on a timer, so it happens at once for everybody in it. Join live in the header is the way in from here, and the party's own page offers the same link. Taking it puts you in the room on whatever the party is watching right now.

If the room is still opening, the page waits and takes you in when it is ready. If it cannot check, it offers Try again and a way back to the waiting room or party page. A connection problem does not mean the party has ended.

Once it is running, the party plays the list you booked and moves through it on its own: when a video ends the next one starts, for everybody at once, and the Watch Along panel says which one of the list is playing. Each new video gives everyone five seconds and two choices: Follow, which also happens by itself when the five seconds are up, and Stay here, which answers that one hop and keeps you where you are. Leaving is separate, and it depends on whose party it is: if you joined somebody else's, Leave the party is in the Watch Along panel whenever you want it. The host's panel offers End the party instead, because a booked party is theirs to finish rather than to walk out of. Watch a playlist together has the whole shape of it.

The follow card clears once the new video is ready and has reached the party's position. If the player cannot make the move yet, the choice stays available.

A live stream plays until the broadcast ends. A premiere that has not started stops the party there rather than skipping it: everyone stays in the room, the panel says the party is waiting, and it plays the moment the premiere begins. If half an hour goes by it moves to the next video, or ends if there is nothing left. A video that cannot be played at all is passed over.

There are two ways a booked party ends by itself. It runs out of videos, which is the ordinary one. Or nothing in the list could be played at all, in which case the booking is kept so it can be booked again.

If you are already in another watch party

You can only be in one at a time. The way in asks first, says which choice does what, and does nothing to the party you are in until you pick. Leaving the other one and joining this one is one press; staying where you are takes you back to the party's page.

What the host can do while it runs

The host gets three controls in the Watch Along panel, in the same place on a computer, on a phone and in the full-screen view:

• Pause for everyone, which becomes Play for everyone while it is paused. Where the party is in the video is kept, so playing again picks up from there rather than starting over.
• Skip this video, which moves the party to the next one in the list.
• Start this video again, which takes everyone back to the beginning of the one that is playing.

A control that cannot be used right now is still there and says why, in words about the button you reached for: a live broadcast has no shared place to pause at and nothing to start again, a video that has not started yet can only be skipped, and the last video in the list has nothing to skip to. Every press says what it did.

If the host drops out

Nothing is handed to a guest, and the party does not stop. About half a minute after the host's connection goes, the party carries on by itself: if they left it paused it plays again from where it was paused, and if it was already playing it simply keeps going. A party sitting on a premiere that has not begun keeps waiting for it. A wait is not a pause, and nothing starts it early. The host can come back at any time and pick the controls up again.

What you are told, and when

A booked party tells you four things, and each one arrives twice: as an entry in the bell at the top of the page, and as an email.

• When you are invited. Everyone invited by name hears about it as soon as the host books the party. The email carries the title, the start time in the zone the host booked it in, and the link to the party page.
• The day before. Twenty-four hours before the start, the host and everyone who has said yes get a reminder. If the party was booked less than a day ahead, this one is skipped: there is no point sending a reminder for a time that has passed.
• Fifteen minutes before. The same people get a second reminder as the waiting room opens, so the link in it goes straight in.
• If it is called off. Everyone who was invited and had not declined is told, whether they had answered yet or not. The host is not emailed about their own cancellation.

Who gets which follows who is coming. An invitation goes to people who have not answered; a reminder goes to the host and to the people who accepted, so saying yes is what puts you on the reminder list. Accept after a reminder has gone out and you simply catch the next one. Decline, or have your invitation withdrawn, and the reminders stop.

Change the time and the reminders move with it. The old ones are dropped and the new ones are worked out from the new time. Anyone who has not answered yet is invited again, with the new time on it; if you have already said yes, the next reminder is what brings it to you. A reminder is never sent late: if it could not be sent before the party started, it is dropped rather than arriving after the fact.

Turning them off

Three switches cover all four, in Settings → Notifications, under What you get notified about: Watch party invitations, Watch party reminders and Watch party cancellations, each with its own in-app and email switch. Both reminders answer to the reminder switch, so turning it off stops the day-before one and the fifteen-minute one together. The two master switches at the top of the same page turn off every in-app notification or every email at once.

When it does not happen

A party that is cancelled, that ends, or that could not start replaces the room with one sentence and a way back to the party page. If the host takes your place back, or the waiting room closes because nobody started the party, the page says that instead. Access to the room closes, and the app disconnects its audio. The server also asks the audio provider to close the tracks and retries if that cleanup fails.

A host who ends a booked party, or calls it off after it has begun, ends it once. Nothing restarts it, nobody is left holding a seat in it, and the record keeps when it ended and why.

The host of a party that could not start is told that nothing was shared with the guests and that the booking is kept, so it can be booked again.

Who you are in here

The waiting room shows people as You and Guest, and nothing more. Names and faces arrive when the party starts, the way they do in any watch party; once it has, the waiting room says the people in it are in the party and points at the way in. Chat works the same way: a message says Guest, keeps its time, and can be reported with the flag beside it if it crosses a line. Reports go to the same team, with the same receipt, as in a running party.

Deleting your account removes your invitations and party seats. A minimal record keeps old sign-in sessions blocked until two hours after deletion finishes and the remaining cleanup succeeds. It contains no persona, age or invitation details. Audio-provider cleanup can remain pending separately when the provider is unavailable.

Related