If you are a Discord user who’s not happy with the recent shutdowns of popular Discord music bots Groovy and Rythm, there’s good news. Discord is testing a native YouTube integration that will let you legally watch YouTube videos together with your friends.
Discord Watch Together – Stream YouTube Videos with Friends
First reported by The Verge, Discord has started testing a “Watch Together” feature after YouTube’s aggressive move to shut down music bots. Once available, you will see a new rocket icon next to the usual video call and screen sharing icons when you join a voice channel. Clicking on it will show up YouTube interface where you can search/ paste YouTube links or pick one of the trending videos.
Other server members can join in to watch YouTube videos with you. It’s worth mentioning that only the person with remote controls can control playback, pause, or scrub the video for the group. Here’s how the UI looks when you are watching YouTube videos together on Discord:
Discord clearly states that you may see ads during YouTube videos. Although it seems unlikely, it remains to be seen if Discord and YouTube would implement a login mechanism so that YouTube Premium subscribers can avoid ads.
As of now, Discord is still testing this co-watching experience with limited servers. According to the report, Discord is planning to roll out Watch Together to all users by the end of October. If you want to try it out ahead of the official rollout, you can join Discord’s Game Labs server. Meanwhile, it’s also possible to stream Netflix on Discord if you want to watch movies with server members.
