Long distance relationships involve micromanaging so here's a simple list of things that can make spending some quality time together easier, be it with your bae or your BFFs. 

Gaze- Long Distance Movie Night

Gaze allows the simplest luxury but it's also the easiest to use. You simply have to log in to their site, send a link to your movie date and you'll instantly form a two-way connection between your PCs. The platform comes with video chat and instant messaging. Videos can be streamed from YouTube or you can play your own files. For the latter, however, you both have to have the same file. Once the video/file is playing, functions such as pause, play, fast forward and rewind are enabled on both ends, reducing the hassle of having to synchronize. The site has a small video tutorial to walk you through the process and no log in is required!

Available at: https://letsgaze.com

Rabbit

Rabbit claims to help you share your world, and it gets pretty close to keeping that promise. The platform allows multiple people to log into the same "room" to chat, watch videos, shop, use social media accounts, study and basically do things online together by sharing the screen on their website/app. You can either create an account or use a guest account for 24 hours. Their Launchpad allows you to access different platforms under categories such as gaming, social, TV and movies, popular websites, etc. Control over these can also be switched between people in the "room" using the Remote Control feature. 

Available on Apple Store and for PC at: https://www.rabb.it/

Syncplay

Syncplay is an application that you can download onto your PC and use to create a personal "room" that can only be accessed by people you provide your Syncplay server address to. You can also add a password for added protection. Syncplay, however, does not stream from online sources and only plays local files, which need to be the same. The benefit here is that you can play your file using players like VLC but functions such as pause and play work on all PCs using the room. It also shows you when other users are ready/not ready to view. There are no options for texting or video chatting but the fact that there is no buffering time is a redeeming quality. 

You can download it from: http://syncplay.pl/

Watch2Gether

Watch2Gether lets multiple users watch stream videos from platforms like YouTube, Vimeo and Amazon by copy-pasting the URL and playing it. There's an option for chatting and you can also use your webcam. However, you cannot play any local files and not all sites may be supported. 

Available at: https://www.watch2gether.com

Nooha Sabanta Maula is an Anthropology major whose anthropologising has made her confused about life. Send her your thoughts to [email protected]