New Year’s Eve brings Times Square to many people’s minds. The iconic ball drop is watched by more than a billion people worldwide each year. Now an official app lets you watch the countdown even when you’re not by a television or packed into Times Square with 1 million people who haven’t peed all day. Countdown Entertainment’s Times Square Ball app is available on Android and iPhone.

And the app promises to deliver more than a countdown and livestream at midnight. It seeks to capture all the events leading up to the ball drop for hours.

Jeffrey Strauss, president of Countdown Entertainment, told International Business Times, “I’ve been doing this since 1995. When I started, the event was the ball coming down a flagpole with some confetti. Today, it’s a six-hour, 20-minute multimedia event with everything from Chinese cultural performances to country music stars to big pop stars to Latin performances and all these revelers that come here.”

Strauss said that short of being in Times Square for the big night, the new app gives the best experience. “What’s amazing to me is, the people at home, they see it through the filter of the network they are watching. Whether it be ABC, Fox News Channel, CNN, NBC, MTV, they’re all here but they are showing their audience their niche,” he said. “Whereas, if you watch our webcast, you get to see everything that’s happening here and really get to be a part of the whole 6 hour-plus event.”

This isn’t the first year the app is available. Strauss told the Associated Press that in the last four years, it’s been downloaded by nearly 500,000 people in 184 countries. He expects it to be significantly more popular this year, as cell phones become truly ubiquitous.

The best part of the app, according to Strauss, is the social media feature. The Times Square ball has its own Twitter feed that users can interact with right through the app. “The ball has its own personality. It’s a little sassy, it’s been on top of that building all year long, looking down on us but having a great time,” Strauss said. “It has a whole mythology about his father being in the medical field as a medicine ball, his mom is an elementary school and he has a rivalry with the Rockefeller Christmas tree, who is the brightest star in December.”

A close second for the best part of the app would be the unity it gives to a globally recognized event. While the app may not dump a ton of confetti on you — that’s a literal ton of confetti dropped in Times Square — it will let you take part in an event that’s often unreachable in person. “It gets back to the heart of what Times Square New Year’s eve is: truly a global celebration,” Strauss said.