I would love to watch a show with my daughter in another state. We both have apple tv. Are there any apps that would enable us to have a watch party?
MacBook
I have this issue too. I've only seen one app that allows you to buy Netflix and stream together, but Apple doesn't seem to have this, especially now with a pandemic there's no way to "watch TV" or "watch a movie" together, with a single purchase or if we own it. Apple any response??
You will have to find a way (countdown by FaceTime or something) to synchronize the same start moment, if this is about on-demand content. There are no apps for that. Buffering differences may cause unsynced streams, though. That even applies to live streams.
If you also want to keep a connection with each other during this event, then the Apple TV box itself cannot assist in that, but your Mac might be able to (e.g. FaceTime).
If only one of you subscribed to the content provider of this show, then that service might support Family Sharing (some do, some don’t). It may or may not be something for you two to share certain subscriptions. Family Sharing is limited by country, but not by state. You would share services, but not the account itself.
Family Sharing also has the option for Purchase Sharing (e.g. iTunes Store movies), but that would also mean that all group purchases are payed by one individual. It is optional.
Family Sharing - Apple Support
Set up Family Sharing - Apple Support
Share App Store, iTunes Store, and Apple Books purchases with Family Sharing - Apple Support
We discovered we can't use zoom and share the screen which is what we hoped to do. I didn't consider the streaming lags that often happen so thank you for pointing that out. There is a choice for sharing on the video menu under the appletv app on my laptop but it does not click to anything. I guess I'll have to investigate family sharing further. Thanks for your response.
We gave up. Even with each of us having a subscription we can't watch together. We tried streaming simultaneously but the variations in speeds make that a little difficult as well. It would be great for Apple to allow it. Thanks for your response.
Thanks for your response. I'll do that!
Thank you. I’m sure this will be helpful for someone.
The show we wanted to watch is on Apple TV not Netflix. Perhaps apple will come up with something in the future.
SteveL913 wrote:
I have this issue too. I've only seen one app that allows you to buy Netflix and stream together, but Apple doesn't seem to have this, especially now with a pandemic there's no way to "watch TV" or "watch a movie" together, with a single purchase or if we own it. Apple any response??
This is a user-to-user forum. Apple won't respond here. However, you can let them know what you'd like to see them implement here:
I just used Watch With Friends to do this. I was on an AppleTV, my niece was on a laptop. https://watchwithfriends.com/
it supports AppleTV and Roku boxes, and iOS in addition to desktops. Netflix is the only service at this time.
It took a little bit to get it working initially, The instructions were unclear and incomplete.
I was looking for a Watch with Friends app for AppleTV. What I needed was the iOS Watch with Friends app on my iPhone or iPad, and then at a point in the setup it asked me what device I wanted to play it on, and offered my ATV as a device...
Then it told old me I had to download the Caavo app on my my ATV. Somewhere in that process I paired the iOS app as a “remote” to the ATV by entering a displayed code.
With some hiccups, we got it going, but Audio was not in sync enough to keep our FaceTime sound on, so we muted. But then after a minute my niece said FT was making her computer audio inconsistent, so we stopped FT and stuck with the chat within WwF.
My 2 major annoyances were that it didn’t give any notifications that a msg came in, so I had to keep my phone in view to watch for incoming msgs, and that the color scheme made MY messages stand out, rather than the other persons...
Disney+ now has Groupwatch built-in, which is supported on ATV. I’ve only played a bit with it myself. You can play on ATV and use an iOS device to send one of 6 emoji reactions. Then they pop up in the corner of the screen with the name of the person briefly. I think you’d have to use a separate form of text-based chat if you want more in depth...
watch party apple tv
