Syncplay

Better than any of the "watch together" websites. Apart from local files, you can also use youtube-dl to watch youtube. You can also use direct url (F12 → Network (Media) → URL) to watch something together. For example, anime streaming sites.

Works with plenty of players and there are public servers (though I prefer hosting over VLAN).

If you are looking for a solution that won't get you kicked out of your Debrid provider? Your search is over.

As far as I am aware the only watch together solution that literally doesn't care what you watch, or how you want to watch it....it relies on the one and only metric actually required to do its job.

Syncplay: Are these media files the same length?
Watch Party: Yes Syncplay: Y'all have a nice day now.

I really like this piece of software.

The reason I found this program was by searching for alternatives to OpenTogetherTube, which, while it works wonders for YouTube videos, only lets you use the aforementioned platform and files that are publicly reachable on the internet. And uploading huge video files to google drive not only takes a long time, but also consumes my tiny 15 GB of space.

And that's when I found out that this worked with local files.

While this may be a limitation to some people, it's the exact thing I was searching for. This is because the protocol only sends info about the playback time and title, and no image data, so it consumes little to no bandwidth.

Furthermore, it also uses your media player for playback (usually VLC, which has a remote control part that is automatically installed as a plugin that talks to syncplay). So, you have all the benefits of regular VLC, with the addition of playback syncing. That is what makes this software the best one to use if you're looking to sync local files.

Also, did I mention that you can self-host your own server too? Well, you can. 🙂

Works amazingly to watch videos with my friend. There's no latency at all between devices, and it pops up a message whenever someone pauses or changes the position, so you can tell it's syncing properly. The only annoying thing is that you both have to have the video file, but you can just use something like share.ipfs.io to send it, and the download time is worth it for absolutely zero buffering at all.

I also managed to set up a personal server on my computer really easily, so my friend just connected to my computer instead of using one of the public servers.

It is simple and works well. You only all need to have the same file.

Great for watching stuff with friends. I initially figured that everyone would have to have the exact same file to watch together, but I found out by accident that as long as the files have the same length timewise, it works perfectly.

A wonderful and sadly not well known application.