A Practical Guide to a Streaming Multi View App

A streaming multi view app lets you watch several live streams or videos at once in a single browser tab. Instead of juggling multiple windows, you can arrange streams from platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and Kick into a single, organized grid. This is useful for tracking live events from different perspectives or following multiple creators at the same time.

ViewGrid is a free tool for this that works directly in your web browser. You don't need to download anything or create an account to start watching.

When Is a Multi View App Actually Useful?

While you can watch anything you want, a multi-viewer setup works especially well for a few common scenarios.

Live Events and Sports
For major tournaments or sporting events, broadcasters often have multiple official streams. You might have the main broadcast, a tactical overhead map, and streams from individual players' points of view. A multi view app lets you combine all of these into one dashboard. You can find pre-made grids for many popular events on our live events calendar.

Creator Collaborations
When a group of streamers collaborates on a game, they are all live from their own channels. Watching them side-by-side lets you see every perspective and catch interactions you would otherwise miss.

Following a News Story
During a breaking news event, different channels provide varied coverage. You can put several news sources next to each other to get a more complete picture of what’s happening.

Just Keeping Up
Sometimes you just want to keep an eye on a few different things—a chill music stream, a favorite gamer, and a live podcast. A multi view app lets you do that without dedicating your entire screen or multiple monitors to it.

How to Set Up Your First Multi-Stream Grid

Creating a grid of streams is straightforward. Here’s how to do it with ViewGrid.

1. Go to the Grid Builder: Open the ViewGrid multi-stream viewer in your browser. You’ll see an empty grid with a bar at the top asking for a stream link.

1. Add Your First Stream: Paste the URL of a stream from Twitch, YouTube, Kick, or Rumble into the bar and press Enter. You can also add a video by its link. The stream will appear in the first cell of the grid.

1. Add More Streams: A new input box will appear. Continue pasting links or channel names to fill the grid. If you're looking for YouTube streams, you can also use the search function directly within the grid to find live channels without leaving the page.

1. Choose a Layout: Use the layout buttons in the top toolbar to change the arrangement. On a desktop computer, you can choose layouts for up to 20 streams. On a mobile phone browser, layouts support up to 6 streams to fit the smaller screen.

That’s it. The streams will begin playing inside their respective cells.

Getting the Most Out of Your View

Once your grid is running, you have a few simple controls to manage the experience.

Controlling the Audio
Every stream you add starts muted. This prevents a wall of noise when you open a grid. To hear a stream, just click the speaker icon on that video player. Clicking it again will mute it. You can only have one stream’s audio active at a time, so unmuting a new stream will automatically mute the previous one.

Focusing on One Stream
If something interesting happens in one stream, you can click the center of that video player to bring it into "focus view." This makes that stream large and temporarily hides the others. Click it again to return to the full grid. You can also use the standard fullscreen button on any video player to make just that one stream take over your entire screen.

Viewing the Live Chat
For live streams on Twitch, YouTube, or Kick, you can open the chat. Click the chat bubble icon in the top toolbar. A panel will slide out from the side, allowing you to select which stream’s chat you want to follow and participate in.

Saving and Sharing Your Layout
The URL in your browser's address bar automatically updates to include all the streams in your grid. To share your exact layout with a friend, just copy and send them the link. If you want to save a layout for yourself, you can create a free account to store your favorite grids.

What to Expect: Performance and Limitations

Watching multiple video streams at once requires a stable internet connection and a reasonably modern computer.

• Internet Speed: Each stream consumes bandwidth. Watching four 1080p streams is like watching four separate YouTube videos. If your connection is slow, the streams may buffer or automatically lower their quality.
• Computer Resources: Decoding multiple videos can be demanding on your computer's processor (CPU). While ViewGrid itself is lightweight, the work of playing the videos is done by your browser. If you notice your computer’s fan spinning up or other applications slowing down, try reducing the number of streams in your grid.
• Mobile vs. Desktop: While you can use ViewGrid on a phone, the experience is best on a desktop or laptop with more screen space. Mobile devices can handle fewer streams at once due to their smaller screens and more limited processing power.

Watching on a TV

People often ask how to get their grid onto a television screen. ViewGrid doesn't have a "cast" button or a dedicated smart TV app. The methods that work are general features of your devices, not the site itself.

The most common ways are:
- Using the web browser built into your smart TV to open viewgrid.tv.
- Connecting a laptop to your TV with an HDMI cable and using the TV as a second monitor.
- Using your computer or phone's built-in screen mirroring feature (like AirPlay or Miracast) to show your screen on the TV.

Other Tools People Use

ViewGrid is one of many tools available for watching multiple streams. Other web-based viewers like MultiTwitch exist, often focusing on a single platform. There are also downloadable desktop applications that offer similar functions. Each tool has a different approach to design and features. If you're interested in a detailed comparison, our article "Best Multi Stream Viewer for Twitch, YouTube & Kick" explores some of the other options available.