Multi-Stream Viewer for YouTube and Twitch

A multi-stream viewer shows more than one live video on a single page, each in its own tile. People use one to follow a breaking story across several news channels, keep a game or event open next to the commentary around it, or run a few ambient streams while they work. The point is to see everything at once and decide, stream by stream, what you hear.

StreamTiles doesn't host or produce any video. Every tile is the platform's own embedded player, so the stream is delivered by YouTube or Twitch; StreamTiles supplies the grid and the controls around it.

• YouTube: live-stream and video links. A standard watch link, a youtu.be link, or a /live link all work.
• Twitch: live channel links, such as twitch.tv/channelname. Twitch videos (VODs) and clips can't be added.

No other platforms are supported.

Choose Grid to give every stream equal space, Focus to enlarge one main stream, or Cinema to keep a main stream large with the others alongside it. The layouts work the same for a YouTube-only grid, a Twitch-only grid and a mixed one. See all features for the rest of what the viewer does.

• Every stream starts muted, because browsers generally block autoplay with sound. Unmute the ones you want to hear.
• Each tile, YouTube or Twitch, has its own mute button and volume slider, and there are controls to mute all, or to mute the others whenever you unmute one (Audio focus in Settings).
• Twitch shows its own controls inside its player. They aren't synchronised with StreamTiles' controls, so use one set or the other for a given tile.
• A browser can refuse to unmute a player on its own. If that happens, the tile goes back to muted rather than showing audio that isn't playing.

On a computer the tiles share the screen in your chosen layout. On a phone they stack in one column and the page scrolls, so up to six streams fit without anything being squeezed into a corner. Mobile browsers may restrict autoplay and background playback, and a phone may need a tap before a stream starts.

Twitch asks for its player to be at least 400 by 300 pixels. On smaller tiles StreamTiles lays the Twitch player out at that minimum and scales it down to fit, so its text and controls look smaller than on a YouTube tile.

Whether a stream may be embedded and played is up to its owner and the platform. A private or removed YouTube video, a channel that has disabled embedding, or a Twitch channel Twitch won't play in your browser can all fail. StreamTiles doesn't work around these restrictions, and it can't always tell you why: YouTube reports a few reasons, and Twitch's player reports very little.

When something goes wrong only that tile changes. A YouTube stream that ended or can't be played shows a message with options to open it on YouTube or remove it. A Twitch channel that isn't live shows Twitch's own offline screen and is marked OFFLINE. A Twitch player that can't load at all says so and offers Try again; it doesn't claim the channel is offline. The other streams keep playing. See Third-Party Content for why streams can change or disappear.

Each live stream is a video your device has to decode and download, so six at once ask a lot of a processor and a connection, and a mixed grid can use different amounts than a YouTube-only one. Start with two or three streams, and add more if playback stays smooth. Players only load once you open the viewer (and, where StreamTiles asks first, allow third-party content), and the Twitch player script only loads when a Twitch stream is actually in your grid. The Privacy Policy explains what YouTube and Twitch can receive when their players load.