Watch YouTube Videos Privately with ShareTube

By Jacob Mills. in Social Media. Updated on April 6, 2023.

Note: ShareTube is no longer available.

There would be hardly anything you didn’t know about YouTube, however ShareTube is a completely new thing in the realm of video viewing and sharing services on the web.

ShareTube is a web service to watch, share and talk about YouTube videos. With this service, you get to watch videos of your choosing in real time with your friends. It’s a relatively new service, and so far, ShareTube has only served less than 40,000 shared video-viewing in what they call Rooms.

ShareTube requires no registration, although you will be prompted for a username. Every time you open the website, a random YouTube video from ShareTube rooms is played at the background of the homepage. Most of the time room name is also mentioned along with the video, so if anyone is interested in watching the video can simply join the room and enjoy the video.

Creating a room

At the ShareTube site<, enter the name of your room (name should either consists of numbers only or text only but not both), click Make a room, write your username and finally press the Enter button to create your ShareTube room.

Once you have created your room, on the top right side, you will see Facebook and Twitter icons to invite your friends from corresponding social networks to join the room or you can share the room name with others so they can join as well. Below these icons, chat textbox is located to comment and discuss about videos.

At the top middle, a YouTube video will be played that is being watched by everyone in the room and below this video you will see a search box where you can enter a YouTube video title or link address, click Submit and finally click Add to Queue below a video you want to add in the playlist.

If you choose a room name which is currently in use for some other room, then it will give you an error and ask you to select another room name.

Joining a room

To join a ShareTube room, enter the room name you want to join in the textbox, click Join a room, write your user name and finally hit Enter on the keyboard.

Once you have joined a room, you will see the same room options discussed earlier.

The room could be either created by one of your friends or a random active room you just joined by looking at the room name in homepage.

What I like about ShareTube

ShareTube is a very interesting service to allow users to watch videos in real-time. The things which I found particularly interesting are:

It is an ad-free service.
It has a simple interface which makes it very easy to use.
A user can add multiple videos in queues.
Any user can pause the video to give real-time environment feel.
It does not require any traditional registeration for its use.
It does not charge you anything at the moment, to use the service.

Improvements expected in future

Although, ShareTube is a cool web service to spend quality time with your friends, while chatting and watching YouTube videos, in real-time, but there are still a few major improvements required to make the service more efficient and user-friendly:

At times, the website takes a bit longer to load which might be irritating.
The page where we write our user name should contain an option to proceed further, rather than just relying on the Keyboard Enter button.
There should be an option to make a room public or private because a user may not want videos from his/her ShareTube room to be played on someone else’s homepage background.
There should be an option for room admin to kick out annoying users from the room.
There should be information about developers and their contact details as well on the website.
Room name of videos playing randomly at the homepage background is sometimes missing, instead, it should be there always.

Conclusion

ShareTube a unique way to watch videos, including your favorite movie, video or a song, online with your friends and loved ones. It offers a number of cool features, however, due to the fact that it is still a budding service, there is a lot of room for improvement.

If you have any experience with ShareTube, do let us know in the comments section.