I Rebuilt My Karaoke App So Everyone's Phone Could Be a Remote

Lê Huy Giang Posted on Jun 1           I Rebuilt My Karaoke App So Everyone's Phone Could Be a Remote # devchallenge # githubchallenge # webdev # githubcopilot GitHub “Finish-Up-A-Thon” Challenge Submission This is a submission for the GitHub Finish-Up-A-Thon Challenge What I Built VKara is a browser-based karaoke room app for singing at home with friends or family. It is not trying to replace YouTube. YouTube is already great at playing videos. It already has almost every karaoke song we need. But YouTube is not really designed to manage a karaoke night where many people want to choose songs together. That is the gap VKara tries to fill. You open VKara on a TV or laptop as the main playback screen. Everyone else joins the same room from their phone using a 4-digit room code or QR code. Then anyone can search for songs, add them to the queue, pause, resume, or skip. The TV only needs to play the video. Everyone's phone becomes their own remote. That is the whole idea. Simple enough to explain in one sentence. Not simple enough to build in one weekend. I learned that part the hard way. Demo Links: Live demo: https://vkara.vercel.app/en GitHub repo: https://github.com/lehuygiang28/vkara Before branch: https://github.com/lehuygiang28/vkara/tree/before Old backend repo: https://github.com/lehuygiang28/vkara-api Small warning: the demo is running on limited resources, so if it is slow, please give it a moment. My wallet is still a student wallet. lol. The flow is: Open VKara on a TV or laptop. Join the room from a phone by code or QR. Search for a karaoke video. Add it to the shared queue. Control playback together. Before: the idea worked, but the product still felt like a video app squeezed into a karaoke use case. After: the mobile flow is now focused on joining, searching, choosing an action, and controlling playback. The Comeback Story I started VKara around early 2025. At that time, my goal was very personal. I wanted a better way to si