Social distancing and self-quarantine is all good and well when you have pets and a partner to hole up with, but many are finding themselves lonely and bored as they rewatch Brooklyn Nine-Nine for the fifth time while eating cereal for dinner.

Human contact is important, and Netflix wants to help by providing a little online assistance.

According to New York Post  there’s now a free Google Chrome extension, Netflix Party, that allows you to virtually ‘hang’ with your friends while watching a movie or series together on Netflix.

A tweet from immersive theatre expert, Christine Woods, went viral this week when she let the world know about this great new feature:

PSA: If you want to still have movie night with friends without risking COVID-19 spread, Google Chrome has an extension called Netflix Party that allows you to simultaneously stream Netflix with friends. It has a chat window & play/pauses for everyone in the group so you stay synced.

If you’d like to set up a viewing party, here’s how to get things going:

To set it up, add the Netflix Party extension from the Chrome web store, then open a video in Netflix. ‘Create your party’ by clicking on the red ‘NP’ icon adjacent to the toolbar and then click “Start Party” to share the party URL with friends you want to screen-share with. Friends need only click the party URL, and they’re in.

It seems simple enough.

New Netflix series Tiger King drops tomorrow so this is the perfect time to connect.

Forget ‘Netflix and chill’ – Netflix and social distancing is a thing now.

[source:newyorkpost]