Streamlabs is available for Windows and Mac. Streamlabs OBS is available for Mac, and it offers largely the same features as its Windows counterpart, with themes and overlays for free to make your broadcast look professional. Streamlabs OBS is available on macOS in an open beta capacity, allowing live streamers on Mac to access customization tools for creating professional broadcasts, engaging with audiences,. Streamlabs (formerly known as TwitchAlerts) is a desktop wrapper for the web platform with the same name that aims to help you include beautiful notification alerts into your Twitch stream.
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.
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.
Table of Contents
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 For Macbook
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 For Mac Pc
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 For Mac 2020
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.
Like this article?Follow @chrisoncode on Twitter
Read next...