Watch together and music
Play a video or a music queue in sync for everyone in a room. Each room has its own.
Watch a video or listen to music at the same moment as everyone else in a room, and react together.
Start Watch together
- Join a voice room. When nothing is playing, choose Watch together in the row at the bottom of the room, beside the call controls. You can also choose Activities in the call controls, then Watch together. Somewhere else in Hubs, tap the arrow on your call in the top bar instead.
- Paste a link from YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch, Dailymotion, a PeerTube site Hubs knows or the Internet Archive, or a direct video link from an approved site. If your hub has YouTube search set up, type what you want and choose Search.
- Check the preview and choose Start. Everyone in the call sees it play in sync.
Whoever starts the video is the host. The host can change it, pause it for everyone or stop it. Everyone else can sync, react and ask for control.
Watch from Plex
- Open Settings, Connections, Plex and choose Sign in with Plex. Hubs shows a short code: open plex.tv/link, sign in to Plex there and enter the code. Your Plex password never comes to Hubs.
- In Watch together, choose Pick from Plex, then a server, a library and a movie or episode, and choose Start.
- Everyone watching signs in to Plex the same way and streams from the server with their own sign-in, so the host's library has to be shared with them in Plex. If someone cannot reach it, Hubs tells them to ask the host to share it.
Watching from someone else's server needs the server owner's Plex Pass or the viewer's Remote Watch Pass. Hubs never relays the video: it streams straight from the Plex server. Sign out of Plex in Settings removes your Plex sign-in from Hubs at once.
Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video and Max protect their videos, so no site can play them in sync. Hubs tells you so when you paste one; share your screen in a voice room instead.
You can also start it from a text channel's menu. People who have not joined see Watch along.
Hang out while you watch
While a video plays, it is as big as your room allows and the room chat sits beside it, so you can talk and type at the same time. Close the chat with its X and bring it back with Room chat; Hubs remembers which you like. Your friends sit beside or under the video, in the space it leaves.
Cinema
Choose Cinema (C) on the video, or press C. The video fills the whole room, the sidebar and the room's header fade away, and your friends float as small faces that light up when they talk. Choose Show chat (T) for the chat as a glass drawer. The controls fade after a few quiet seconds; move the mouse, tap or press a key to bring them back. Press C or Escape to go back to the room. Cinema is in Video options and in Jump to anything too, and it works for a shared screen or a game stream: choose Cinema on the shared screen.
From cinema, Full screen (F) takes it to your whole monitor. Mute, Hold to talk, camera, people, chat and Leave call come with you. Voices always play over the video, and the video gets a little quieter while someone talks. Turn off Lower the video while people talk in Video options if you prefer.
- C: cinema on or off.
- F: full screen on or off.
- T: show or hide the chat.
- Space (hold, in cinema): talk while you hold it.
- Escape: leave full screen, then cinema.
On a phone, turn it sideways or tap Cinema. The chat opens from the bottom and mute stays in reach.
Play music in a room
- Ask a hub owner to turn on Music in voice rooms in Manage, then Add features.
- In the room, choose Music, paste a YouTube or SoundCloud link (or search YouTube) and choose Add.
- Choose Start the music. Songs play for everyone in the call, one after another, in a small player beside the song's title. A link with a start time (like t=95) starts there.
Your own levels: the volume button on a video and in the music strip sets how loud Watch together and music play for you, from 0 to 100 percent, apart from people's voices. Mute for me silences them just for you.
Now playing shows the song, its channel, its length and who added it, at the bottom of the room with the song's art lighting it up. Up next opens beside the player and lists what is coming. You can remove your own songs, and everyone in the call can Vote to skip. The people who control the music (everyone, a DJ role or staff, as the hub sets it) can skip and stop, and reorder by dragging a song by its handle (or with the arrow keys on it), or with Play next.
Every room has its own
Pause stops the music for everyone in the room on the same second, and the card shows who paused it. Play picks it up from there for everyone. The people who control the music (and whoever started the song) can pause and play; your own volume and Mute for me stay yours.
Each voice room and stage plays on its own, so four rooms can have four different things on. Rooms that are playing show a music note or a play icon in the channel list; point at it to see the title.
A room plays one thing at a time. Starting a video while music plays asks Pause the music and watch? When the video ends, a DJ can choose Resume music to pick up where it stopped. While a video plays, music waits.