Teleparty alternative for your own video files.

02

They solve different halves of the problem

Teleparty is a browser extension, so it can only sync what a browser is already playing. That makes it excellent for the big streaming catalogues and structurally incapable of touching a file sitting in your downloads folder. There is no version of Teleparty that plays your own MKV.

SyncTogether is a native desktop app built around the opposite case. It opens the file locally on each machine with hardware-accelerated playback, and keeps play, pause and seek aligned across everyone in the room. For a 4K HDR file with multiple audio tracks and subtitles, this is the difference between watching it properly and not watching it at all.

03

Nobody needs a second subscription

Teleparty requires every person in the room to hold their own active subscription to whatever you are watching. For two people that is often fine. For a film club of eight, or for a couple where one person pays for a service the other does not, it quietly becomes the blocker.

SyncTogether has no such requirement, because the room is pointed at a file or a YouTube link rather than at an account. Joining a room does not even require creating an account.

04

What happens when only one of you has the file

The usual failure of local-file sync is that one person has the video and the other does not, and the evening turns into a file transfer. SyncTogether lets the host upload the file to the room so everyone else streams it directly, without hunting down their own copy first. Nobody counts down from three.

Signed-in free accounts can share files up to 2 GB within a weekly allowance; Premium raises the limit to 10 GB per file with no weekly cap. Guests can join a shared room but cannot upload.

05

Talking during the film

Teleparty's free tier gives you a text sidebar. Voice and video chat exist, but only Premium members can turn on a camera or microphone, so most groups on the free tier end up running a Discord call alongside the extension: two apps, two sets of settings.

SyncTogether puts low-latency voice and optional video facecams in the same window as the film, so reacting to a scene does not cost you the scene.