Watch together without downloads

Why "no download" matters more than it sounds

Every install step costs you guests. The friend on a locked-down work laptop, the parent on an old iPad, the cousin who refuses to add another app to their phone — they will all bounce off a download screen before they get to the part where you're watching together.

Browser-based rooms remove that step entirely. The same URL works on every modern device. The room is a webpage; joining is opening a tab.

What "in the browser" actually unlocks

Modern browsers ship with everything a small watch room needs: encrypted peer-to-peer transport, screen and tab capture, hardware-accelerated video decoding, and a usable input model on phones and remote controls. We lean on those primitives so we don't have to ship our own runtime.

• Zero install footprint— Nothing lives on the host's or guests' devices after the room ends.
• No update treadmill— The browser is the runtime. Updates ship with the page.
• Works on managed devices— Corporate laptops and shared family computers can join without admin permissions.
• Same URL everywhere— Phone, laptop, tablet, TV — one link, one experience.

How browser performance compares to a native app

For watching together, the gap is small. WebRTC media flows over UDP, video is hardware-decoded by the browser, and audio uses the same codecs as native voice chat apps. The host pays a slightly higher CPU cost for screen capture than a native screen-share tool would, which is why we ship aggressive battery-saver and codec-preference settings.

What you give up in exchange for the install-free flow is mostly polish: deeper system integration, push notifications outside the page, and OS-level keyboard shortcuts. For a watch party, that trade is almost always worth it.

What guests see when they click the link

They land directly in the room. The page asks for the bare minimum: optionally a microphone if they want to talk, optionally fullscreen if they want a cinema view. No signup wall, no email confirmation, no "would you like to install our app?" interstitial.

Hosts can choose to require an account for their own session if they want larger rooms or higher quality, but guests joining their room never have to.