OBS Studio is a great piece of software, but the beauty of it is that you can make it even better. In this Quick Stream Tip I’m going to explain you how you can install plugins in OBS Studio to spice things up even more.
Installing plugins into OBS Studio is a fairly simple thing. The first step is to go ahead and search for a plugin that you’d like to download. There are many places where you can go look, but the best place is the official OBS Studio plugin directory. Here you will find many plugins, most of which are free and created by the community. You’ll find plugins for various things, from settings different transitions per scene, to adding closed captions to your stream, to various funny camera effects.
Once you’ve found the plugin you want to install, click on it and download the version for your operating system. Most cases you’ll get a .ZIP file when you download. In this file, you’re likely going to find 2 folders:
- data
- obs-plugins
Sometimes you’ll also find an automatic installer or perhaps a readme file. But those 2 folders are the thing that we’re going to want.
In order to install this plugin, the next thing you’ll have to do, is find your installation folder of OBS Studio. The location of this depends on your installation settings, but by default you’ll find it in:
WINDOWS: C:\Program Files\obs-studio
MAC: ~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio
Once you’ve located the OBS installation folder, you’ll notice something you’ve seen before. Remember those 2 folders we’ve seen in the downloaded .ZIP file earlier? You’re gonna find exactly these folders in the OBS installation folder. In order to install the plugin, all you have to do is unpack the .ZIP file in the OBS installation folder and in essence merging the contents of those 2 folders (data & obs-plugins) together.
And that’s it. That’s how you install plugins into OBS Studio. Now you do want to check whether or not the installation succeeded. In order to do this, boot up OBS Studio and look for the plugin. Where you can find this, depends on the nature of the plugin. Some plugins will add something to the “Tools” menu, others will add new source types, or other settings. Be sure to check the description of the plugin (on the download page back on the OBS site) in order to know what to look for.
Want to watch the video version of this Quick Stream Tip? Go to my YouTube channel!
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