Watching the same film at the same time as someone who is not in the room is a thing streaming services have been ambivalent about for years. Features appear, get promoted, and are quietly withdrawn. The most recommended one of the lot, Amazon's Prime Video Watch Party, is among the withdrawn, which is why a lot of the advice on this subject sends you looking for a button that is not there.
So this piece does both jobs. It names where each service stands right now, and it keeps the three mechanisms separate, because the mechanisms outlast any particular feature.
One condition applies to every route below, without exception. Everyone taking part needs their own access to what you are watching. None of this is a way to share a subscription.
One: built into the service
Two things work here today: Hulu's own feature, and Apple's SharePlay, which some other services plug into. Of the rest, one has been withdrawn, one never offered it, and one could not be confirmed. Service by service.
Hulu Watch Party
Hulu runs the only synchronised viewing feature here that does not depend on Apple hardware. It keeps playback in step for everyone in the session and puts a group chat next to the video.
The limits are specific:
- Eight people maximum in one session. They can join on separate subscriptions, or on different profiles of the same one.
- Adults only. Accounts and profiles belonging to under-18s cannot start or join a session.
- Hulu.com in a supported web browser, and nowhere else. Hulu describes it as online-only, so there is no app version and no television version.
- Thousands of on-demand titles rather than the whole library. Eligible ones carry a Watch Party icon.
Hulu's own help page also sends iOS and tvOS subscribers to SharePlay as a second route.
Apple SharePlay
SharePlay is a system feature rather than an app feature, which is why it reaches further than any single service's version. It runs over a FaceTime call, and the video plays in sync on every device on that call. Playback controls are shared, so anyone can play, pause, rewind or fast-forward for the group.
Everyone needs access to the title on their own device, through either a subscription or a purchase. Worth noting for anyone searching: Apple now writes the service name as Apple TV, formerly Apple TV+.
Because the call and the film run over one connection, the audio handling is better than a separate voice call running alongside a stream.
HBO Max, through SharePlay only
HBO Max has no watch-party feature of its own. What it has is SharePlay support, with playback synced across everyone invited to the session. Three things are required: an Apple device (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or Apple Vision Pro), a Standard or Premium plan, and an adult profile.
That plan requirement leaves out Basic with Ads, the cheapest tier. It is a good example of a restriction that never appears on a price comparison, and there are several others worth knowing before you downgrade.
A naming point, because it breaks searches: the service is called HBO Max again, not Max. Anything still calling it Max is working from old information, and the Max help addresses now redirect to HBO Max ones.
Prime Video Watch Party, which is gone
Amazon's Watch Party is the feature most articles on this topic still tell you to use. Amazon no longer documents it anywhere.
Both of Amazon's help articles for Watch Party now return the site's page-not-found screen. The current Prime Video help index has no co-viewing entry at all, across its sections on devices, casting, live events, billing and accessibility. Requested in the same way at the same time, Amazon's other Prime Video help pages return their articles normally, so this is those two pages being gone rather than a regional block.
What does not exist is an Amazon announcement retiring the feature, or a date for it. The accurate way to put it is that Amazon no longer documents Watch Party, rather than that Amazon announced its removal. For planning an evening, the difference does not matter.
If you want the closest replacement, it is the extension route below, which still covers Prime Video.
Netflix: no feature, and no SharePlay
Netflix documents no synchronised viewing feature. Searching its help centre for a watch party returns its party-themed games, Party Crashers, LEGO Party! and Boggle Party, plus unrelated articles on pausing and My List. A search for SharePlay turns up nothing about co-viewing either, which fits a service that does not support it.
For Netflix, the second and third routes are the only ones available.
Disney+: not confirmed either way
Disney+ is the gap in this piece, and it is more honest to say so than to guess. Its help centre is a single-page application that returns the same shell for every address, valid or not, so a page that does not exist is indistinguishable from one that does until you read the text on it. The GroupWatch article's text could not be read for this piece.
Plenty of guides state that GroupWatch has been withdrawn, and some attach a date to it. None of that could be checked against a Disney page, so it is not repeated here as established fact. Teleparty, meanwhile, still lists Disney+ among the services its extension supports.
If you subscribe, the check takes a few seconds and beats any article, this one included. Open a title in the app and look for a GroupWatch icon on its detail page. If it is not there, the feature is not available to you on that device, whatever the reason.
Two: a browser extension
Third-party extensions add synchronised playback to services that do not offer it, with a chat panel alongside. Teleparty is the best known, and it is the practical answer for Netflix and for Prime Video since Amazon's own feature went.
Its site lists six services: Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video. There is also a sports section, marked as a beta. Teleparty sets out the rest on its support pages:
- It is a browser extension. Chrome, Edge and Safari are the ones it leads with, and Opera appears on the support page too. There are Android and iOS apps as well.
- Firefox is not supported.
- Smart TVs and games consoles are not supported, so this stays a computer and phone option rather than a television one.
- Everyone needs their own account on whichever service you are watching.
- Teleparty puts the ceiling at more than 1000 people in a single party, which is far past anything a built-in feature allows.
Two limitations are worth knowing in advance. Extensions break when a service changes its player, sometimes for weeks. And a browser is where you get the most restricted video quality on several services, so a film watched this way can look worse than the same film on a television.
Install from the official store listing for your browser rather than from a link someone sends you, since this category attracts imitations.
Three: by hand, which works better than it sounds
Open a voice or video call, both press play on a count of three, and check the elapsed time occasionally.
This is the option everyone dismisses and it has real advantages. It is the only route that works on a television for Netflix or Prime Video, since one has no feature and the other's is gone, and the extension does not run on a TV. It works when you and the other person are watching through different services entirely. Nothing breaks when a player is updated.
Drift is the objection, and in practice it is minor. Streams do not run at different speeds, so once aligned they stay aligned, and a quick check of the timer every half hour catches anything. Agreeing that whoever pauses says so out loud handles the rest.
For a film rather than a series this works well. For anything where reactions need to be tightly synchronised, a built-in feature is better.
Practical points for any of the three
Use a separate device for the call where you can, so the film has the television and the conversation has a phone. It avoids the audio conflicts that make people give up.
Agree on subtitles beforehand, since one person having them on changes the pacing of when people react. If the reason is dialogue clarity rather than language, that may be an audio setup problem worth fixing rather than a subtitle one.
Decide who is choosing before everyone arrives, because picking a film by committee over a call takes longer than the film. If you are working through a director's work together, having the filmography in front of you makes that decision quick. And if one of you is behind on a series, the group session is where spoilers are most likely to arrive.
If the two of you are working through a weekly show rather than a film, agree on the schedule up front: Slow Horses runs six weekly episodes, and one person watching ahead is the fastest way to spoil it.
