Whatever Watch2Gether decided to change ruined its very ability to play videos. Practically every video attempted to be played is given the “This YouTube video cannot be played directly on Watch2Gether. The uploader has either disabled embedding or the video is age restricted. (YouTube does not allow age-restricted videos to be embedded on any site.) To sync-play this video in a separate window using our browser extension, follow the instructions below.” error - when none of that is even true. Videos that couldn’t be played because of the above reason will suddenly be able to be played upon refresh, for no other reason than that a refresh took place. Video playlists don’t progress after a video ends, either, so you have to manually click the next video - which will almost certainly inevitably state that it cannot be played directly on Watch2Gether. Furthermore, the extension that they are always pushing for us to use is just a hyperlink that takes us back to the Watch2Gether website - utterly worthless and pointless and it does not in any way impact a video’s ability to be played. Basically, if this isn’t fixed, there’s absolutely zero point to this website AT ALL - and I’ve been using it for years and years. I’m sure there are other websites out there that can do a better job than Watch2Gether is doing right now - in that they can play any generic video.
Seriously, what’s going on with this site? Every other video claims it’s age-locked or unavailable, but if I refresh the page, suddenly it’s working. It’s just not synced with the people I’m trying to watch together with. When a site called Watchtogether won’t let you “watch” things “together” with your friends, what’s the point? Heck, for as many times as we’ve had to reload, refresh, cross our fingers and hope, I might as well make a daily playlist on youtube, share it, and just count to three!
running into the same issue
Spent the past hour being able to refresh and things would eventually play. That doesn’t work anymore.
Screen share still works…mostly? I don’t know if this is an isolated issue, but a friend of mine gets nothing but a black screen when I do it.
But yeah, this is completely asinine. Is this something W2G changed and failed to bug test entirely, or is YouTube doing this out of spite? Does anyone know?
I doubt it’s YouTube - if it was, refreshing the page wouldn’t make it work.
I don’t think it’s on purpose at all. But yeah this is concerning. I think they are updating something that is effecting our video viewing. I’ll see about asking one of the mod team about it.
Watch2Gether is now completely unusable for my partner and myself. It won’t play a single video. Refreshing no longer fixes anything. I guess we’ll try Discord’s in-app video sharing.
I would assume they would have some level of bug testing before releasing an update like this. It’s grown to the point where I can’t even get a single video to play on the site at all now, and I’d have assumed that would have been something that at least someone would have caught it.
Makes sense…Anyway I’m contacting someone who helped me with an issue I had previously so hopefully that will get their attention.
my guess is this youtube. they really want their ad money. we’ve gotten away so long without watching ads
I mean, I do that anyway by using the Brave browser. Watch2Gether has nothing to do with it. On YouTube’s site, so long as I watch in the Brave browser, I get no ads whatsoever. I definitely think it’s something on Watch2Gether’s end.
Having the same issue, my husband is able to watch but I am not unless I open up the W2g sync popup thing.
same issue here, only select videos work
people here claiming that the site is “completely useless now” etc. are absolutely overreacting though.
the issue has been existing for only 3-4 hours (i was actively using w2g right before it happened) and if my assumptions are correct it was the middle of the night for the people who would be able to take care of it.
so chill out yall, one day of repairs wont kill us
Same here. Even tried using it on a different browser, incognito, new account, no account, everything is blocked. My friends who never downloaded the extension can still use the site normally. This site is completely useless for me now.
Same Problem, used it every day for the last month , no problem at all, but since today i cant watch any video, no matter if extension or not, logged in or not, private browser or not, different browser, other network, mobile hotspot, created a new room, no use. please fix that!
every single youtube video I try is broken as well, even videos I just watched the other day in my history with no problems. plz fix w2g
Thank you all for your feedback! There was indeed an issue. A fix has been deployd and Watch2Gether work again.
Not fixed still, I am still getting same issue.
Can explain a bit more in detail what the issue is that you are seeing? YouTube does not allow embedding of age restricted content and there is not much we can do about it except from playing them in a separate window using our browser extension. Regular videos should play fine though.