Watch Parties

Watch videos together with your community. Create rooms, sync playback in real-time, chat while you watch, and build a shared viewing experience.

Watch Parties brings the "watch together" experience to XenForo. Whether it's movie nights, live streams, or music listening sessions, your members can host rooms, invite friends, queue up videos, and stay perfectly in sync.

Real-Time Video Synchronization

Everyone sees the same thing at the same time. Play, pause, seek, or change speed.

• Multi-provider support: YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch, HLS streams, and direct video URLs
• Playback controls: Play/pause, seek, and speed adjustment (0.25x–2x)
• Live stream detection: YouTube live streams are automatically detected, no seeking, just continuous playback
• Drift correction: Automatic position correction when sync drifts beyond 2 seconds

Live Chat

A real-time chat panel keeps the conversation going while you watch. Messages appear instantly with role badges so you always know who's talking end and receive messages in real-time

• Role badges for Host, Co-host, and Moderator
• Chat flood protection (configurable cool-down)
• Message moderation: delete your own or lower-ranked members' message

Queue System

Build a playlist for your watch session. Drag to reorder, auto-advance to the next video, or pick any queued item to play.

• Add videos from any supported provider
• Drag-and-drop reordering
• Auto-advance when the current video ends
• Configurable max queue size
• Host/Co-host queue control with optional participant adding

Roles & Member Management​

A 4-tier role hierarchy gives hosts full control over who can do what:

1. Host: Full control. One per room.
2. Co-host: Nearly equal to host. Can promote and moderate.
3. Moderator: Can moderate chat and members.
4. Participant: Watch, chat, and enjoy.

Promote, demote, mute, or kick members: all from inline context menus in the member list. A host grace period keeps the room alive if the host disconnects temporarily.

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Room Visibility & Invitations​

Control who can find and join your rooms:

• Public: Listed for all to see and join
• Unlisted: Accessible by direct link only
• Private: Invite-only access

Two invite types:

• User Invites: Send direct invitations to specific users with role assignment and XenForo alerts
• Link Invites: Generate shareable tokens with optional max uses and expiration (up to 1 year)

Scheduled Events & Recurring Watch Parties​

Plan ahead with a full scheduling system. Create one-off or recurring events that automatically materialize into rooms when the time comes.

• Recurrence presets: Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or custom (iCal RRule)
• RSVP system: Members can mark "Attended" or "Interested" per occurrence
• Calendar view: FullCalendar integration with month, week, and list views
• Automatic room creation: A cron job creates the room and loads the queue when the scheduled time arrives
• Upcoming events widget on the main Watch Party page

Burst Reactions​

React in real-time with animated emoji that float across the video player. Pick from your forum's smilies and let the reactions fly. Requires Redis Cache

Chat Archival​

Save the conversation for posterity. Archive any watch party's chat to a forum thread, including:

• Watch party summary with host info
• Full media playlist with titles and URLs
• Complete chat log with user roles and timestamps
• Attendee count

Real-Time Transport Options

Watch Party works out of the box and scales with your infrastructure:

• AJAX Polling: No extra requirements. Built-in. ~1–3 second latency.
• Server-Sent Events (SSE): Requires SV/RedisCache addon. Near-instant push.
• WebSocket (Centrifugo): Requires Centrifugo server. Near-instant push

Moderation & Reporting

Fully integrated with XenForo's moderation system:

• Report rooms and report members through the standard reporting system
• Moderator log entries for all moderation actions
• Inline moderation: quick actions from context menus
• Room protection: prevent accidental deletion of important rooms
• Global moderator permissions: