Watch anime together, wherever your friends are

Season premieres, the opening everyone argues about, the episode you’ve waited all week for. Most of it can go on a Walnut’s shared screen. Paid streaming services work differently, and that’s covered below.

What you can watch together

• YouTube, in sync. Trailers, openings and endings, music videos, reviews and, from official channels in some countries, full episodes. Paste the link and everyone’s player plays it at the same moment.
• Direct video links. MP4, WebM, MOV and HLS links play in sync on everyone’s own player too.
• Sites without DRM, on the TV. The room’s TV is a real browser. If a site plays in Chrome without DRM, the whole room can watch it there, with ads blocked.
• Episodes on your own computer. Play them and share your screen. Walnut for Windows shares any window with its sound, and Chrome and Edge share a tab with its sound.

Only share what you have the right to share. Walnut’s terms rule out pirated episodes, on the TV and in screen shares alike.

Ideas for an anime night

• Openings tournament. Queue a season’s openings, play them in sync and vote in the room chat.
• Next season, first look. Line up the trailers for the coming season and pick what the group will follow.
• Episode one club. Everyone watches a first episode on their own account at the same time, then talks it over on voice.
• Rewatch with a newcomer. Send reactions over the screen at the big moments, so nobody talks over the dialogue.

How to set it up

1. Start a Walnut and send the link to your friends. They join in their browser, with nothing to install.
2. Queue up openings, trailers or episodes from YouTube, or video links. The next one plays when the last one ends.
3. Use the countdown for a premiere, so everyone starts at exactly the same moment.
4. Switch to cinema layout to make the screen as big as it gets, and join voice.

Honest limits

• Most paid anime services can’t be shown, as above.
• The TV’s picture is 1600 × 900 at 30 frames a second. A synced link usually looks sharper, since each person streams it at the quality their own connection allows.
• Phones can watch and talk in the browser, but can’t share a screen.

Questions

Can we watch anime from a streaming subscription in Walnut?

Usually not on the shared screen. Services that protect their video with DRM show black in any shared browser or screen share. Each person can play the episode on their own account while you talk in a Walnut.

Will subtitles show?

On the TV and in a screen share, everyone sees the picture exactly as it plays at the source, so subtitles that are on there show for the whole room.

Is it free?

Yes. Walnut is free on the web and for Windows, and a Walnut holds up to 16 people.