Plex Watch Together

[Luke 42077]

Just now, grainsoflight said:

"Let's break it and see who gets mad" is a Musk method of doing things, not a good method of doing things. And Plex only words things vaguely so they won't get sued by people that bought into one service while they transition to a completely different type of service. Ask all the people that still don't have functioning live TV and DVR after 2 years

I am not trying to defend them, but I think any software application that intends to live on for many years or multiple decades does need to periodically re-evaluate what is important and what might no longer be.

In this case it's a relatively new feature so it's a little surprising, especially while many mainstream streaming apps are making the effort to add this to their own apps. 

[Neureka 16]

I think the one thing we can all agree on is the enshittification of Plex continues.

Regardless of when or if this feature request is added, there is going to be lots of opportunities to receive those of us that decide to leave Plex in search of a new product.

[grainsoflight 2]

32 minutes ago, Neureka said:

I think the one thing we can all agree on is the enshittification of Plex continues.

Regardless of when or if this feature request is added, there is going to be lots of opportunities to receive those of us that decide to leave Plex in search of a new product.

You're right, this is an excellent opportunity for emby to get those customers

Edited February 26, 2025 by grainsoflight

[neohasse 7]

Reason why people here thinks it's not a big demand for this is surely because users aren't even aware about this feature. This is a very new way of watching content together. If this was marketed by, for example, Netflix, it would become wildly popular.

I do this all the time with friends and family but with other apps, would be both amazing and great for Emby to implement this so, for example, all of my users on my server would do movie nights together, especially split families.

Edited April 3, 2025 by neohasse

[Neureka 16]

@Lukeis there a way we can fund the work for this as a community? I'm pretty sure that there is enough interest in this that the community would come together to help pay for this feature. I know I personally would be willing to pay a decent sum to contribute towards the development costs for this.

Plex has torched the last thing tying me to their software, and Emby is my next home for my friends and family. I've actually referred another friend of mine here and he plans to get premiere as well.

Is there anything that we can do as a community to aid you in bringing this functionality to Emby?

[Luke 42077]

Hi, it’s something we’re interested in for future updates. Thanks.

[ivanthomson 12]

This would be an awesome feature to have.  A definite must have in my opinion.  I hope the EMBY devs put this on priority status.  I believe It would hugely benefit users as well as EMBY as a product. 

Also, and correct me if I am wrong, but a chat server isn't needed really since people watching remotely will be organizing via phone, text, zoom, google meet, facetime, signal, whatsapp, slack, messenger or whatever likely anyway.

I know when we do remote movie parties with family and friends we all connect on an app or phone first and often keep a phone call going through the movie to communicate (shouting, talking, etc.).  

For me, anyway, just a simple way to gather up the people on EMBY and have the host hit play and have all the clients in the party pool play the movie at the same time would be a killer feature.

Thank you.

[emiyakir 3]

Since currently there is already a feature that basically you can use one device as a remote to control the video play on another device, wouldn't that be very straightforward to allow a host to control other users' video play and play on his own device in parallel? This would allow two devices watching at the same time and i believe (?) that should suffice most people's needs?

 

[Bielecki 8]

On 5/29/2020 at 3:18 AM, Luke said:

Hi, yes this is something we're very interested in. Thanks for the feedback.

On 11/6/2020 at 9:59 PM, Luke said:

It's something we're interested in for future updates. Thanks for the feedback.

On 4/26/2021 at 11:00 PM, Luke said:

It's something we're interested in for future updates. thanks.

On 5/20/2021 at 4:25 PM, Luke said:

It's something we're interested in for future updates. Thanks.

On 10/24/2023 at 10:19 PM, Luke said:

Hi, it is planned for future updates. Thanks for the feedback.

On 10/13/2024 at 1:43 AM, Luke said:

Hi, yes this is planned for future updates. Thanks.

On 5/12/2025 at 2:39 AM, Luke said:

Hi, it’s something we’re interested in for future updates. Thanks.

Hi, are you still interested for this feature in for future updates? But this time for real. You've been telling us that for a 5 years straight. Can you at least give us ETA?

[Neureka 16]

39 minutes ago, Bielecki said:

Hi, are you still interested for this feature in for future updates? But this time for real. You've been telling us that for a 5 years straight. Can you at least give us ETA?

Actions speak louder than words. I’d just assume it’s not coming at this point, unfortunately.

[Bielecki 8]

Well, I agree with @emiyakirthat this feature shouldn't be too hard to implement, as remote control is already present in Emby. And you wrote

On 5/12/2025 at 12:49 AM, Neureka said:

I know I personally would be willing to pay a decent sum to contribute towards the development costs for this.

Well, I already pay monthly subscription (Emby Premiere) to support the team, because this software is better than any other on the market. I only wish that devs would listen to community as well... Or at least stop misleading us for years.

Edited September 27, 2025 by Bielecki

[Luke 42077]

Hi, keep an eye on the beta channel for this in the near future. Thanks.

[rechigo 364]

4 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, keep an eye on the beta channel for this in the near future. Thanks.

I hope you're actually serious and not just leading us on... don't let us down please, we've been waiting for this since covid..

[QuackMasterDan 4]

For anyone who may be interested,

User Oratorian took it upon themselves to create their own Watch Together solution. While it requires running Python on a separate machine, Linux or Windows, it works.

Only released a few days ago, so still under development, but I have it in a working state. As of today (10/23/2025), I had to download his most recent config file from GitHub instead of the Release ZIP, but it's pretty straightforward to get going.

Hoping this helps someone out there.

 

[KolbyG 3]

Though the one that Oratorian created looks good, and I'll probably try it out. Has anyone looked at the API recently?

https://betadev.emby.media/reference/RestAPI/PartyService.html

Looks like there are some API endpoints for join/leave/view parties. Has this been around for a long time or is there finally some official work being done on this? It's entirely possible this has been around for years and I've just never seen it (I only recently started moving to Emby from Plex), but I haven't really seen it mentioned anywhere. If this is a hint at something official coming soon, that's exciting!

[Neureka 16]

22 minutes ago, KolbyG said:

Though the one that Oratorian created looks good, and I'll probably try it out. Has anyone looked at the API recently?

https://betadev.emby.media/reference/RestAPI/PartyService.html

Looks like there are some API endpoints for join/leave/view parties. Has this been around for a long time or is there finally some official work being done on this?

I’m pretty sure that’s new! Woohoo!  

[Luke 42077]

Those api endpoints relate to an unannounced feature so I wouldn't try to use them yet.

[TVTech 7]

On 9/27/2025 at 1:54 PM, Bielecki said:

Hi, are you still interested for this feature in for future updates? But this time for real. You've been telling us that for a 5 years straight. Can you at least give us ETA?

Yikes five years on this one? I guess my request to fix the AC3 to AAC audio conversion will never happen then, because it's only been 8 months for that one. I hate that they give us these annoying generic answers to everything on here. 

Edited November 14, 2025 by TVTech

[Neureka 16]

1 hour ago, TVTech said:

Yikes five years on this one? I guess my request to fix the AC3 to AAC audio conversion will never happen then, because it's only been 8 months for that one. I hate that they give us these annoying generic answers to everything on here. 

New API endpoints show that this is actively being worked on.

[TVTech 7]

What do you think the timeframe might be for this one?

[TVTech 7]

2 hours ago, Neureka said:

New API endpoints show that this is actively being worked on.

I meant to say AAC to AC3 audio conversion, not the other way around.

[ebr 16169]

14 hours ago, TVTech said:

I meant to say AAC to AC3 audio conversion, not the other way around.

That is unrelated to this topic.

[TVTech 7]

30 minutes ago, ebr said:

That is unrelated to this topic.

[redacted] 

Edited November 15, 2025 by GrimReaper
Watch your tone

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  Please keep the discussion in this topic on topic.  Otherwise, things get very confused (as above).

Thanks.

[Issacar 3]

I have been using  Plex for 6 years now and have even bought a lifetime Plex Pass for the Watch Together feature. I would switch to Emby if the tv app had the watch party feature