Houseparty Review

Houseparty, the name itself defines its purpose, enabling us to connect with the people we care the most. The social networking app has gained huge popularity in the past few days. It is dominating the download chart on both Google Play and the Apple App Store.

The face-to-face social networking app, not only connects you with your loved ones but let's you chat and play games with your friends and family.

Houseparty availability

The app is available on multiple platforms including Google Play, Apple App Store, Mac OS, and Chrome. You can use Houseparty on your smartphone and PC both (installing the Chrome Extension, or desktop app). Signup with your email ID and create a unique username.

Houseparty is a completely free app where you can connect with your loved ones. It has numerous features that remind you of other apps that you might have used to chat with your friends and family.

How to use the Houseparty app?

Once you have successfully created your account, log in and set up your profile. Add your selfie and connect to your contact book invite your friends and family for the party. The plus icon in the top right corner, lets you find your contacts, and group multiple people together into a 'Houseparty' for group calls.

Below the Plus icon, you can see a dice icon that takes you to some of the games available on the app including Pictionary game Quick Draw and the Ellen DeGeneres-inspired Heads Up. Choose a game, then it will ask to add friends to play with, wait to connect with them and play together.

Swipe from right to left, to check your inbox, where your contacts can send you video messages. When you are in a group call, you can use the buttons at the bottom of the screen to toggle your mic and camera on and off, switch to front and rear camera and the padlock icon to ‘lock’ the chat to prevent any more people from joining.

Add friends and start Houseparty

Once you allow Houseparty to get access to your contacts, it will show you a list of people who are already registered with the app. Click on the ‘add’ to include them in your Houseparty address book or click on ‘invite’ if your friend has not joined yet. Now, you are ready to have a 'houseparty'.

The experience

Houseparty has gained a lot of popularity in the past few days. It has intuitive UI with one aim to offer its users a quick group chat (Party). At first sight, it looks interesting, when you start using the app, some of the features look similar to WhatsApp and Snapchat, but not exactly with improvements. It is a good mix of both apps.

Using Houseparty, 8 people can join in a video chat at one time. When you or your friend, connect over a Houseparty, others get a notification to join the chatroom. The trouble is your friends can start the party anytime, and if you are connected with multiple groups, then you should be ready to get plenty of party invites. Or better to be selective with your friend list.

Gaming with friends, Houseparty enables that. You can invite your friends to play games during chat sessions. However the games available in the room are not well developed, they have only a few rounds. So after a few rounds, you would get annoyed.

Houseparty lets you record the chat sessions, which is good to keep the memories, but it won't notify you if someone is recording your conversation, so be very careful. Also, you can record and send video messages to your contacts, you will receive a notification when they read it.

On different devices - The smartphone version is perfectly fine and all the functions work smoothly. But the experience is not the same. The desktop app has features but not much useful. The browser extension also lacks some of the features, so better to use it with the smartphone.