Invite links
What a Global SharePlay invite link contains, and why friends land on a normal HTTPS page instead of a chrome-extension URL.
An invite link is how you hand someone the room you are already in, on the video the room is watching right now. You can also tell them the room ID and let them type it into the extension. The link is the shorter path when they already have Global SharePlay installed.
Rooms themselves are described in Rooms and hosts. If the link opens the wrong video, use Troubleshooting.
What you copy
From the extension, copy an invite while you are in the room. The link carries the current video and the room ID, so a friend is aimed at the watch page the group is on, not at a homepage and not at whatever YouTube tab they happened to have open.
If the room switches videos after you copy the link, the old link still describes the video from the moment you copied it. Copy a fresh link after a switch when you want the next person to land on the new video. The room ID can stay the same. The video part of the link is what goes stale.
You can also read the room ID out loud or paste it in a chat. A friend who already has the extension can join with that ID and a nickname. The link and the ID are two ways into the same room.
Where the link goes
Friends who have the extension land through our hosted join page, on the hostname redirect.globalshareplay.com, and then on the YouTube watch page for the current video. They do not stay on a chrome-extension:// URL. Browser pages are not allowed to keep people inside an extension origin, so the join step is a normal HTTPS page whose job is to open the right watch URL.
That page may receive the room ID and the video ID in the address so it can open the correct YouTube URL. It is a handoff, not a second video player and not a place we ask people to browse. This marketing site (globalshareplay.com) is the public documentation. The join hostname is only the handoff.
We do not link that hostname from these pages while it is not returning a normal site. The extension is what generates the invite a friend actually opens.
What the friend needs
The friend needs the Global SharePlay extension installed before the invite can put them in the room. They get it from the Chrome Web Store. The link cannot install Chrome or the extension for them, and this website will not offer a sideload zip as a shortcut. They also need a nickname, the same way you did in Getting started.
If the host is approving joins, the friend may wait until the host accepts them. If the room is already at 10 people, the link cannot squeeze in an eleventh member. If the room has been idle long enough to be discarded, the link will not resurrect it.
What an invite is not
An invite is not a trap, a download, or an ad page. Do not wrap it, shorten it through a misleading domain, or add your own overlays. The Terms of Use forbid using join links to deceive people. YouTube’s own terms still apply to the video you chose.
If you only wanted someone to watch later, alone, send them the normal YouTube URL. An invite is for people who are joining the room.