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Guide · Zoom · Discord · Mac

How to watch YouTube together on Zoom

A watch party needs everyone to see the video and hear it clearly. Zoom’s screen share does both, with catches. Here’s that way, and how to send the sound cleanly on its own from a Mac.

The short version

  • Zoom’s Share sound sends the video with your screen. The picture can be choppy for some, and every Mac sound goes too.
  • Patch for Chrome sends only the video’s tab into the call, so everyone hears it at one level, with your voice on top.
  • For the picture, share your screen with Share sound off, or have everyone open the same video and count it in.

Share your screen with sound

Click Share Screen, choose the browser window, and tick “Share sound” and “Optimize for video clip”. The first time on a Mac, Zoom installs its own audio device, ZoomAudioDevice. The picture can be choppy for some people, and the call hears every sound your Mac makes, notifications included. More in play YouTube on Zoom.

Send the video’s sound into the call

To send just the video’s sound, use Patch for Chrome, a free extension for Chrome, Edge and Arc. It sends the YouTube tab into Patch, which we make, and Patch mixes it with your microphone into a microphone called Patch Mix, so the call hears the video and your voice at levels you set. Patch runs on a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later.

  1. Add a Chrome tab in Patch. In Patch, choose Add a Chrome tab from the list of sources.
  2. Add Patch for Chrome and pin it. Add it from the Chrome Web Store. Chrome asks once about your microphone; that only lets it find the Patch speaker, and it never listens. Click the puzzle piece, then the pin.
  3. Send the video’s tab. On the YouTube tab, click Patch in the toolbar, then Send this tab.
  4. Choose Patch Mix in Zoom. In Zoom’s Settings › Audio, choose Patch Mix as the microphone and your headphones as the speaker, never Patch Pass-Thru, or the call hears itself.
  5. Stop Zoom removing the sound. Under Microphone modes, choose “Original sound for musicians”, which turns off Zoom’s noise suppression.
  6. Go live. Click Go live in Patch. The meeting hears your voice and the video together.

The tab goes quiet in the browser and you hear it through Patch, so you hear what the call hears. Click Stop when the video ends.

Two ways to show the picture

  • Share the window, sound off. Share the Chrome window but leave Share sound unticked, so the sound reaches the call once, through Patch Mix. Leave Optimize for video clip off too: ticking it turns Share sound on.
  • Everyone plays it, you send the sound. Everyone else opens the same video and mutes it. You play yours unmuted and count “3, 2, 1, play”. Everyone gets a sharp picture, and the only sound in the call is yours.

Watching YouTube together on Discord

Discord’s desktop app can share a screen with sound on macOS 13 or later, but people report it as unreliable on a Mac, and the voice channel hears it only while watching the stream. Choose Patch Mix as your Input Device instead and turn off Noise Suppression in Voice & Video; the whole channel hears the video. See play music on Discord.

Questions

How do I watch YouTube together on Zoom?

Share your screen with Share sound and Optimize for video clip ticked. To send the sound on its own, at one level, send the video’s tab into Patch Mix with Patch for Chrome, choose Patch Mix as your microphone, choose Original sound for musicians, and share the picture with Share sound off.

Why is the video choppy when I share it on Zoom?

A screen share can stutter for some people. Optimize for video clip helps. If it still stutters, have everyone else open the same video on their own screen, muted, and send only the sound from yours.

Can people hear me talk over the video?

Yes. Patch mixes your microphone with the video’s tab, so the call hears both. Pull the video’s fader in Patch down until you can be heard over it.