How to spectate in Fortnite

Fortnite allows you to spectate friends and other players, but only in certain circumstances – here’s how to do it, and what you can get up to while spectating.

Maybe you want to learn more about some cool combos or tricks in Fortnite or simply want to sit back and relax to watch your friends play. Either way, spectating a game can give you so much insight as you have room to study other players’ decision-making skills without being distracted in the heat of battle.

Luckily, just like most competitive games, it’s possible to spectate and even watch a replay of the game. However, if you’ve been a bit out of the loop, the way spectating works is different now in Chapter 5, Season 4, than it used to be.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to spectate in Fortnite.

How to spectate

The only way to spectate your friends in Fortnite is to get finished off. When this happens, you’ll be able to start spectating your friends just after your reboot card drops — unless, of course, they manage to get your card and revive you using a Reboot Van. To put it simply, you can continue spectating as long as you’re essentially dead in the match.

You can toggle which one of your friends you’d like to watch after you’re eliminated. This works in duo, trio, and squad.

How to spectate strangers in Fortnite

You can spectate strangers in Fortnite, but only after you’re eliminated – or if you’re playing with friends, until everyone in your team is dead or can’t be rebooted. If there’s still one person alive on your team, you’ll only be able to spectate that person.

Once the last person in your team is eliminated, however, your camera will shift to the player who managed to get the kill. The cycle will repeat if another player eliminates that person, at which point, you’ll end up spectating that player instead.

It’s worth knowing that there used to be a “Watch Game” feature that would allow you to spectate strangers and friends without even being in the same match as them. 

However, this feature was later removed because it was abused by many players, mainly to stream snipe streamers to help out those in the same lobby as them.

What can you do while spectating?

Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you’re useless. There are still some things that you can do when spectating your friends to help them secure victory. After all, if they manage to do it, the win will count towards yours, too.

Make Callouts

When you’re not busy tracking every footstep, it gets much easier to look at your surroundings when you’re spectating. Use this opportunity to spot important items, weapons, or even NPCs to help your friends be more aware.

Give Pings

Even when you’re not in the match, you can still feed your friends crucial information by pinging the map when things are looking busy for them. You can ping locations on the map if you’d like to signal them to rotate to another location. This also works if you know a good location to loot some of the best weapons in the game.