Watch Me Play
What Watch Me Play does#
Watch Me Play (alpha) lets WingHUD see your game while it's on, so you can ask about what's on screen or what just happened without describing it. About once a second it looks at your game, and when something changes it writes a few short notes. When you ask, it answers from those notes and a few recent frames, and says how old they are. It runs in Quiet mode: it answers when you ask and never talks on its own. Coach mode, with spoken callouts, is coming soon.
Start watching#
With your game on screen, click the Watch Me Play widget. The panel opens: check Mode, Capture (Game window or Whole screen) and Frame detail, then click "Start watching". The first time, a card explains what it reads; after that a one-line "Watch Dota 2?" asks before each start, with "Don't ask again" for that game. The hotkey ("Watch Me Play · start / stop" in Settings → Hotkeys, no key by default) starts at once with your saved choices and stops a running watch. Clicking the widget while it watches opens the panel with the status, the last note, Pause and Stop.
Pause, stop and the session review#
Pause and Stop are on the watch pill and in its summary. Paused, nothing new is read or sent for notes and no minutes are used (each resume counts at most about 17 seconds of watching), though a question you ask still carries frames from the last five minutes; Resume carries on the same session. By default it also pauses by itself while your game isn't in front, and resumes when it's back. Stop ends the session and posts a session review in your chat: a short timeline and up to three things it noticed. A watch under two minutes with no gameplay just says there's nothing to review yet.
Ask about a moment, or mark one#
While Watch Me Play runs, a question you ask in the chat carries the newest frame. "What's that?" or "what does this say?" takes a fresh, sharp frame (while paused, the newest from the last five minutes). "A minute ago", "when I died" or "that fight" takes up to four frames from around that moment, and the answer says what time it describes. To mark a moment, press the Last Scene hotkey (no key set by default; Settings → Hotkeys): nothing is captured or sent, a toast says "Marked 12:41", and the moment shows in the summary and the session review, even with Last Scene's "Remember recent gameplay" off. Ask about the moment you marked within five minutes and the question carries the frames from around it; after that, or for older moments, the answer comes from the notes. A question carries at most five frames, sent with it to our AI provider like a screenshot, never in a party, and we don't keep them.
When it stops on its own#
Watch Me Play stops with a short notice at the end of a session (an hour by default; Settings → Watch Me Play → Stop after), when your watch minutes for the week run out, when you join a party, when you switch WingHUD to window mode, when it can't capture the screen, and when the game closes. It can't start while no game is on screen, in window mode, in a party, when you're signed out, in a game whose rules don't allow it, in a game you switched off in Settings → Watch Me Play → Games, or with no minutes left; the widget is dimmed, and clicking it shows the reason.
The frame, the pill and the summary#
While it's watching, a thin frame with corner marks runs around your screen and a red dot shows on the widget and the pill. The in-game chat bar gets the watch pill: the eye, the timer, Pause, Stop and a chat icon; ✕ shrinks the bar to a tiny pill with the same buttons. Click the eye or the timer for the summary: status, mode and capture, this week's usage, the last note with its age, any moments you marked, and Pause / Stop.
Watch minutes#
Watching uses watch minutes: an hour a week during the beta, and two hours in your first week of Watch Me Play (the 7 days from the first time you watch). The week resets Monday at midnight, your time. It's shown as a percentage used, like your other meters: on the widget ("30% used this week"), as "Video" next to Chat and Voice under the chat box, and as "Watch" on the Hub's Home and Account pages; hover for the minutes. Frame detail sets how fast they go: Economy uses half a minute for each minute watched, Auto one, Sharp two. Paused time doesn't count (each resume counts at most about 17 seconds of watching), and minutes are counted on your account, so restarting WingHUD doesn't change them.
What it reads and what it keeps#
On Windows 11, with Game window (the default), Watch Me Play reads only the game window, so other windows, WingHUD's too, aren't in it. On Windows 10, or in a game that doesn't allow window capture, it reads the game's area of the screen, so anything on top of it, WingHUD's windows included, can be in a frame; it then reads only while the game or WingHUD is in front. Whole screen reads the whole monitor the game is on, so anything shown there, WingHUD's windows and other programs' notifications included, can be in a frame. Frames go through our servers to our AI provider, which writes short notes; we store no frames on our servers. The frames picked for notes stay in memory on your PC for five minutes, never on disk, so a question can carry up to five; they're cleared when the watch stops, the game changes or WingHUD exits. The review stays in your chat history; each notes call leaves a usage record with no frames or note text (except a short refusal message if the AI declines).
Which games it works in#
Watch Me Play works with any game WingHUD detects in overlay mode, except games we've marked as not allowed because their rules forbid tools that read the screen. That list may be incomplete, so check a game's rules yourself. Before you start, the panel shows the game's status: allowed by the game's rules (with the date we checked them), rules not reviewed yet (you can still watch, and "Report a rule" opens the feedback form, filled in for that game, to tell us about a rule you know of), or not allowed by the game's rules (with a link to the rule, and no Start). Settings → Watch Me Play → "Games" lists your installed games plus the one on screen, each with a switch that's on by default. Switching a game off keeps Watch Me Play from starting on it from the next start; a watch that's already running isn't stopped. Dota 2 has the deepest integration: the draft, your role and your hero pool. Coach mode is coming soon. Screenshots you take yourself work in every game.
Dota 2 draft help while watching#
With Watch Me Play on during a Dota 2 draft, WingHUD reads the picks, the bans and your slot and role within a few seconds of each pick. Ask what to pick and the answer uses the same pick data as the Dota 2 widget: counters, your hero pool and how you do by role. Once your own hero is picked, it gives lane and matchup advice instead. In the match, answers combine its notes with Dota's live feed and say how old a note is. The widget works the same way with Watch Me Play off.
Does it slow down my game?#
Barely. Watch Me Play uses Windows' own capture, looks about once a second on your PC, and sends a frame when something on screen has changed, usually at most one every few seconds, and about one every 15 seconds when nothing changes. In our tests on a high-end PC, the frame rate didn't change measurably, and WingHUD used a fraction of a percent of the PC's total CPU while watching.
Troubleshooting#
A dimmed widget shows why on its line, and a click shows the reason too: "Works while a game is on screen", "Works in overlay mode", "Off while in a party" or "Used up". A game whose rules don't allow it shows "not allowed by the game's rules" with "Read the rule", and a game you switched off in Settings → Watch Me Play → Games stays off until you switch it back on. The Last Scene button is off while Watch Me Play runs, because it's already watching; just ask about the moment. The Last Scene hotkey marks the moment instead, so you can ask about it later. Like the rest of WingHUD, it needs your game in Borderless or Windowed mode, not exclusive fullscreen. Screenshots and recordings you take show the Watch Me Play frame and pill; nothing is hidden from them.