For a few years now I’ve been live streaming stuff on YouTube, mostly Dungeons and Dragons play sessions as a part of the Total Party Kill podcast. For a while I was using Gameshow, Telestream’s dedicated game-streaming app, and it was okay, but it was discontinued and I ended up using Wirecast, a behemoth of a product that lists for $599.

So a funny thing happened earlier this month: Streamlabs OBS, one of the leading video-streaming apps on Windows, arrived for the first time on the Mac. (It’s powered by the OBS engine, an open-source streaming system I’ve tried a couple of times and always felt way too rough for me to want to use.) Streamlabs OBS is open source, free, and I think I like it better than Wirecast.

Streamlabs OBS for MacOS is here! In this video we'll walk through setting up Streamlabs step by step. We'll install Streamlabs OBS, set up desktop audio w. The actual developer of this free Mac application is Open Broadcaster Software. The software is categorized as Audio & Video Tools. The most popular version among the application users is 0.6. This Mac download was checked by our antivirus and was rated as malware free. The most recent setup file that can be downloaded is 112.3 MB in size. Streamlabs, a popular app used by livestreamers on Twitch and Mixer, launched a macOS client in open beta today. The service has been available for Windows since 2014, but the Mac version will. To qualify as a beta tester for Streamlabs OBS on Mac, you simply have to be a live streamer and own a computer running macOS. We recommend streaming for at least eight hours a week to get the full experience and adequately test for any bugs or issues you see. Grow with Streamlabs Open Broadcast Software (OBS), alerts, 1000+ overlays, analytics, chatbot, tipping, merch and more. The Best Free Live Streaming Software on Windows and Mac Streamlabs Cloud-based and used by 70% of Twitch.

Does Streamlabs OBS have rough edges? Sure it does. But it somehow seems better integrated with streaming services like Twitch and YouTube than Wirecast does. While it doesn’t offer some of the precision layout tools that Wirecast does—I’d like to be able to specify the exact size of objects on the canvas—it’s got some nice shortcuts that make it easy for me to create a new layout in a hurry.

Audio capture can be an issue. I use Rogue Amoeba’s Loopback to create a custom audio input for use by OBS, but Streamlabs also suggests that you can use the free iShowU to do much the same thing.

The results are pretty good! And given that my Wirecast license is about to run out, I think I’m going to move to Streamlabs OBS permanently—and save a whole bunch of money.

OBS Studio is one of the most (if not the most) popular app used when a user wants to stream live video. Whether you want to stream to Twitch or YouTube, OBS is the software that people turn to. Twitch recently released Twitch Studio (Windows only) which should be a viable alternative to OBS.

While OBS has had a high recommendation from streamers, it isn't the easiest to learn or even look at. The UI could be much improved; it doesn't scale well for HiDPI screens. It doesn't add many features besides the main streaming and scenes tools.

Streamlabs OBS (lovingly named SLOBS) was my favorite streaming app on Windows. It has now made its way over to Mac! SLOBS is an open source streaming software built on OBS and Electron.

Compare SLOBS to the OBS interface.

Streamlabs to the Rescue

Streamlabs is a company that has provided all the tools necessary for streamers. They recently got bought by Logitech and that is two of my favorite companies joining forces!

They provide

• The main streaming app
• A much improved UI
• Live chat built into the app
• A feed of events in the app
• Ability to stream to Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and Mixer
• Ability to stream to multiple places at once
• Chatbot built in
• Alerts for feed events
• Themes
• Widgets
• Performant
• Hardware encoding

The amount of improvements that Streamlabs has made to OBS are impressive. The amount of services they've added around streaming are also useful.

You can update your alert themes so your stream can have popups whenever you get a new follower or subscriber.

We can stream to multiple places at once!

We can update the look of our stream with themes:

Chatbot is built in.

There is also a store where you can add plugins to your stream. I'll be using Pretzel to add background music.

Streamlabs OBS Is My Favorite Streaming App

Streamlabs OBS is an all-in-one live streaming app to help all streamers build up their streams. The main tool they provide is their version of OBS.

Streamlabs OBS (SLOBS) is the same code as OBS but improved functionality and UI.

Streamlabs makes it incredibly easy to get started with streaming. I was bummed when I switched over to macOS and found that SLOBS isn't on Mac... until now! I have been using Ecamm Live in the meantime but it's had performance issues for me.

Check out the video for a walkthrough of SLOBS, the tool I'll be using to stream from now on.

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Streamlabs Chatbot For Mac