Watch Together: keeping a series in sync with a friend

What it does

Watch Together links a single series to a single friend. While it is running, every episode either of you ticks off is ticked off for the other as well. You do not have to press play at the same moment or be in the same room. It keeps the two watch histories identical, so neither of you has to say "I'm on episode four" again.

It works on series only. There is no equivalent for films.

Who you can pair with

Two conditions, both checked by the app before it lets you send anything.

• You follow each other. A one-way follow is not enough.
• You are at exactly the same point in that series: the same set of watched episodes, specials included. Two people who have never started it qualify. So do two people who have both watched the first six episodes and nothing else. One extra episode on either side and the option closes.

Neither of you can have a second Watch Together on the same series, whether it is running or still waiting for an answer. Different series are independent, so you can be paired with one person on one show and someone else on another.

Starting one

Open the series page and tap the people icon in the bar at the top. The sheet that opens is titled Watch together and lists everyone who follows you back. The people you can invite come first and the rest after them, each of the two groups in alphabetical order, and every name in the second group carries the reason it is not possible: you are not at the same point in the series, they already have a sync, or you already have one for this series. Tap Invite next to the name you want.

After that the series page shows that you are waiting for them to accept, the icon at the top turns into an hourglass, and a Cancel action appears next to the message.

Accepting or declining

Your friend gets a notification saying you invited them to watch the series together. It sits with their other social notifications. Tapping it opens the series page, where a bar at the top offers Accept and Decline. The same two buttons are in the people sheet.

Accepting re-checks the progress rule at that moment, not at the moment the invite was sent. If either of you watched something in between, the accept is refused with a message saying you are no longer at the same episode. The invitation is not thrown away: it stays pending, so it still goes through once you are level again. When it goes through, you get a notification saying they accepted.

Declining sends nothing back. The invitation simply disappears.

What you both see while it runs

Both series pages show that you are synced with each other, and the icon at the top turns green. Tap the bar or the icon to see who you are paired with and to stop.

What crosses over

• Marking an episode watched, one at a time, from the episode list on the series page or from the episode's own page.
• Un-marking an episode, one at a time or a whole season at once. The episode goes back into your partner's Continue watching too.
• Everything a tick moves: the episode counter, the last episode watched, the position in Continue watching, the watch-time total. If your partner did not have the series in their library at all, the first mirrored episode puts it there as something they are watching.
• Finishing. If your last tick completes the series for you, it is completed for them as well, and the series leaves their watchlist.

What does not

• Mark the whole season as watched and Mark series as completed. These change only your own history. Un-marking a whole season does carry over, so the two directions are not symmetrical.
• Rewatching an episode you had already ticked. Rewatch counts stay personal.
• Ratings, comments and likes. Watch Together copies watched and not-watched, nothing else.

An episode that lands in your partner's history this way does not produce a post in the friends feed. Only the person who actually ticked it shows up there. If your partner has Rate after watching switched on in their settings, they get a star prompt for the episode you just added.

If one of you gets ahead

While the invitation is still waiting for an answer, watching ahead cancels it. That is deliberate: accepting re-checks progress, so an invite you have out-watched could never be accepted anyway. Tick it from the episode list on the series page and the app warns you first, with a dialog titled Pending Watch Together and a Watch & cancel button. Tick it from the episode's own page and there is no warning — the request goes without asking. Your friend is not told. The request just stops existing.

Once it is running, ticking episodes one by one cannot put you ahead, because each tick takes the other person with it. The two bulk actions listed above can, and they do it quietly: your counter moves, theirs does not. The pairing stays active, you are simply no longer level.

How it ends

Either of you can end it at any time, from the same people sheet: Stop syncing. If the sync was actually running, the other person gets a notification that you stopped; cancelling an invitation nobody has accepted yet sends nothing. The one exception is when you no longer follow each other, in which case nothing is sent, so an unfollow does not announce itself.

Unfollowing or blocking someone ends every Watch Together you have with them, on every series at once, with no notification. The app tells you this before you confirm an unfollow.

Ending never touches your history. Every episode already marked stays marked, on both sides, including the ones that arrived through the pairing. Stopping only stops future ticks from crossing over. There is no undo that strips them back out.

You can start a new one on the same series afterwards, but the same-point rule applies again, so you have to be level first.

Invitations nobody answers

A pending invitation does not expire on a countdown. It stays acceptable until someone acts on it, or until one of you watches ahead. Routine housekeeping, which runs once a week, clears out invitations left unanswered for more than 30 days and drops the record of pairings that ended more than 30 days ago.