How to host a Watch Party on Twitch

Twitch is leveraging its position as an Amazon-owned company and bringing a Watch Party feature to the platform. Now, you can watch Amazon Prime shows with your audience. This means you can yuck it up over the latest comedies, or jump out of your seat to some good old fashioned horror, all while chatting with your subs and followers.

There are a few steps you will need to go through before you can avail of the fuction, and a few important things you should know.

Step 1 – Add the Watch Parties quick action to your stream manager

If you want to broadcast a Watch Party, you will need to add the quick action to your stream manager. To do this, follow the below steps:

1. Go to the Stream Manager within your Creator Dashboard.
2. Click the + in the Quick Actions Panel.
3. Add the Watch Parties Quick Action.
4. Click the Watch Parties Quick Action to launch the feature.

Step 2 – Authorize with Amazon Prime

You will need to be an Amazon Prime/Prime Vide customer to take advantage of this feature, and the first time you launch a Watch Party, you will need to sign in with either your Amazon Prime or your Prime Video account.

1. Open the Stream Manager on Twitch
2. Click on Start a Watch Party
3. Click on “log in” at the bottom of the new window

Step 3 – Select your content

This is where it gets a little tricky. You will get a list of available content for you to stream from Amazon Prime, but viewers outside of your region can only join your Watch Party if the title is available with their subscription. You will have the most success with titles that are marked as “Broadly Available”. Not everyone will have them as part of their Prime sub, but most of your viewers should be able to join in.

Step 4 – Your webcam and audio

There will also be some changes to how your webcame works. It won’t appear on the screen the way it does during a gaming stream, and will instead populate above your chat.

1. Fire up your streaming app of choice
2. Disable everything except your webcam and your mic. It is probably best to create a specific scene for Watch Party
3. Resize your camera to be the full size of the broadcast window

After that, all you need to do is start the Watch Party and you can check out your favorite shows with your fans and friends.

At the moment, Watch Party is not supported on mobile devices, but this is something that Twitch is actively working on, and the feature should be available in a couple of months.