Apple promotes ways of staying connected with new SharePlay feature

Watching "Ted Lasso" on Apple TV+ with a friend

Apple has announced the apps and services that support its new iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 SharePlay feature, and offered suggestions for how families and friends can use it.

Apple announced SharePlay at WWDC 2021, then pulled it from release, then brought it back into iOS 15, and iPadOS 15. Now Apple has now revealed just how it can be used.

"SharePlay brings a whole new way to connect, share experiences, and have fun together on FaceTime," Bob Borchers, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, said in a statement.

"SharePlay leverages Apple's integration of hardware and software to deliver a magical experience across iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV," he continued, "and works with many Apple services as well as some of the most popular apps in the App Store."

SharePlay allows iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 users to watch films, listen to music, or enjoy sports coverage while at the same time having a FaceTime call with each other.

"In addition to enjoying apps together, users can share their screens to browse the web, look at photos, or help each other out while on a FaceTime call," adds Apple.

The services supporting SharePlay at launch include:

Apple Fitness+
Apple Music
Apple TV+
NBA
Paramount+
Showtime
TikTok
Twitch
Popshop
Heads Up!
Apollo for Reddit

Apple says that this feature will also come to macOS Monterey "later this fall."

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3 Comments

zimmie

said about 2 years ago

Of note: SharePlay isn't sharing a video stream. It is synchronizing playback in a separate application instance on each device. That means each device must be able to use the application on its own. In most cases, that means every person watching must have their own subscription to the service involved.

appleysjohn

said about 2 years ago

AppleInsider, I’ve noticed it doesn’t work with people on different countries, even if the content is available in both regions and the two persons in the call have a subscription. Can you reach out to Apple on wether these region barriers will be dealt with in a future update? This is really unfortunate, as one of the key uses of SharePlay seemed to watch content with people in other countries when the content is available for both.