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How to Watch a Show with Friends Without Spoilers

You and a friend start the same show. A week later they are four episodes ahead, the group chat has gone quiet in a suspicious way, and every message starts with "no spoilers, but...".

Watching together at a distance is mostly a problem of knowing where everyone is, and of keeping what the others thought out of sight until you get there. OpenTV has three tools for that: Watch together, Activity, and a spoiler warning on comments. This article explains each one, what is free, and what needs Plus.

Before you start

All three are part of OpenTV's optional community. To join, sign in with Apple or Google. Joining is free, and your library still stays on your phone.

Then follow each other. Activity shows the people you follow, and Watch together works with whoever you invite.

Watch together: who is how far

Watch together answers one question: which episode is everyone on?

To start one:

  1. Open the show's page.
  2. Tap the ••• button at the top.
  3. Tap Watch together, then Start and invite friends.
  4. Send the code to whoever you are watching with, any way you like.

Starting a Watch together is part of OpenTV Plus. Joining one is free, so only one of you needs Plus.

To join, your friend opens the same show, taps •••, then Watch together, then Join a friend's. They type the code under Join with a code and tap Join.

From then on, the show tells each of you where you stand, in plain words:

It works from what you already do. Tick an episode as usual, and your friends see that you have moved on.

What is shared is deliberately small: the furthest episode you have watched of that show, with the people you invited, and nothing else. Not your ratings, not your other shows. People visiting your profile never see who you are watching with.

Activity: friends' reactions, only when you are ready

Open the Explore tab and tap Activity. It shows what the people you follow rated, how episodes made them feel, what they commented and which characters they picked, newest first.

The important part is what it hides. If a card is about an episode you have not watched yet, it keeps the verb and hides the rest. You can see that a friend rated an episode, but not the stars or the feeling, only Watch it to see. Tapping a locked card opens the show, not the episode, so one tap cannot drop you into the thing you were avoiding.

Once you mark that episode watched, the card opens up.

Activity is free. Your own ratings and feelings appear in your followers' Activity too. If you would rather they did not, turn off Show my activity to followers in Settings, on the You tab.

The spoiler warning on comments

Every episode has comments, and comments are where spoilers live. So if you open the comments of an episode you have not marked watched, OpenTV stops first:

Spoilers ahead! "You haven't watched this episode. Are you sure you want to read the comments?"

Tap Display anyway if you really want to look, or back out.

Two more settings help. People can tag their own comment as a Spoiler, which hides it behind a tap. And in Settings, on the You tab, under Spoilers, Hide spoilers for unwatched covers comments about shows and films you have not watched yet. All of this is free.

Live rooms, on the night it airs

For a show that is still airing, there is also a Live room on an episode, for the night it comes out. It is a place to react with everyone else watching that evening.

To keep it safe, you have to mark the episode watched before you can enter. A room stays open for two days from the day the episode airs, and the episode's normal comments are always open after that. Live rooms are part of OpenTV Plus.

A routine that works

For two friends on the same show:

  1. One of you starts a Watch together and sends the code. The other joins for free.
  2. Mark episodes as you watch them, as you would anyway.
  3. Glance at the show page to see who is ahead before you message.
  4. After each episode, open Explore, Activity to see what the other one thought, now that it is unlocked.

Nobody has to remember to say "I'm on episode 5". The app says it for you.

What is free and what is Plus

Free: joining the community, following people, Activity, comments, the spoiler warning and the spoiler settings, and joining a Watch together.

Plus: starting a Watch together, and Live rooms. Plus is $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year in the US. The App Store and Google Play charge in local currency, so the price differs by country.

Get OpenTV

OpenTV is free, with no ads, on the App Store and Google Play. Curious about the comments themselves? Read the TV Time episode comments are back. Bringing your history first? See how to get your TV Time history back.

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