Have you opened OBS Studio but can’t figure out where the heck to add alerts? Don’t worry, I got you. Let me show you how to set up alerts inside OBS Studio right now.
Adding Alerts in OBS Studio:
If we go inside OBS Studio, naturally, you’d go to the sources box. Click add a new source, and you’d want to add alerts. But there’s no freaking alerts here! So, it’ll just make you so angry you just have to go and grab your shake weight and viciously shake. Now, there’s a couple of ways to do this.
Using Stream Elements for Alerts:
In today’s video, I’ll be showing you how to use Stream Elements to set up your alerts. If you guys are wondering where I got this really cool overlay from or need some alerts, this is my favorite place to get it, owned. I’ll leave it linked in the description down below, and they were nice enough to sponsor today’s video.
Choosing Overlay Packages:
I usually like to scroll down to where it shows the stream design bestseller packages. As you can see, we’re using the Synth Runner series, but the dark mode series is honestly one of my favorites because I think it looks super sleek.
Setting Up Alerts with Stream Elements:
In order to start setting up our alerts, we’re going to go to streamelements.com. Once you’re on the Stream Elements site, we’re going to go to the top right corner where it says “get started”. Then, if you want to have your alerts for YouTube or Twitch, you’ll be able to switch between the options here. But for today’s video, I’m going to do Twitch alerts.
Creating a New Overlay:
Then, you’ll be brought to the dashboard. But we’re not interested in any of this crap; we actually want to go to the left-hand side where it says “streaming tools” and then click on “overlays”. Now, you can see I have so many different things here, but please ignore it. We’re just going to click “new overlay” in the top right corner.
Choosing Overlay Resolution:
Click that and then it’s going to ask you what overlay resolution we want to use. Majority of you guys will want to use a 1080p resolution because I’m playing on a 1080p monitor and I’ll be streaming at 1080p in OBS.
Adding Alert Box Widget:
So, 1080p is likely going to be the choice for most of you. However, if you notice when we’re moving the alert box around, it’s not matching up perfectly to your OBS screen, then you might have to change your resolution here. So, keep that in mind. But majority of you are going to use 1080p.
Customizing Alert Settings:
Then, from here, you’ll notice that we have the title in the top left. So, I’m just simply going to call this “alert” so we know what the heck it’s going to be later. Then, we can start by adding a widget on the left-hand side. So, we’ll click add widget and then we’ll go to the alert section and click on “alert box”.
Customizing Alerts:
By default, they give you a bunch of different default alerts. So, for example, they have a follow alert that plays. So, if we click a little gear icon next to any of the alerts, we’ll be able to customize that alert. You can see it has this little default image and it’ll have a default sound and basically a default alert that’s already set up for you.
Testing Alerts:
Just to test some stuff out, I’m going to hit the “x” button and then we’re going to make sure that all of these are on or whatever ones that you want to have on for your stream are enabled. Then, anytime you make any changes in Stream Elements, we’re going to click the save button in the top right corner so that way it’ll save the changes and then we can go to the bottom of the screen where it says “emulate”.
Customizing Alert Appearance:
We’re going to click that and then we’re going to make sure that we click on “follower event” because we want to test our follower alert. And they already have default things in there, so that way you can just have something if you want to ready rock and roll right away. So, we can click on “follower event”. It’s going to play the default follower alert.
Customizing Alert Media:
If we want to customize any of these alerts, we just go to whatever alert that we want to change, we’ll click the little gear icon next to it. So, I’ll click the follower alert gear icon, and we’re greeted with all of these different options.
Uploading Custom Alert Media:
If you want to change what the alert looks like, we can change the image or video. So, if you guys bought an overlay package from owned or even alerts from owned, you’ll be able to set that stuff here. So, if you want, we can click on “set image”, which will also bring it to “change video” as well.
Fine-Tuning Alert Appearance:
And then, we can start fine-tuning it to make it even fit more if you got different alerts. But you’ll do that under the text settings, advanced settings, and then change like the margins to change the alignment of the text.
Text Settings:
But since we’re under the text, you can change the font, you can change how large this font is, you can change the bold. You can do pretty much everything, shadows, you can do the highlight. You can change the highlighted color, so if you want it to be, let’s say, this color, because that’s a really pretty color. I like that color. Then we’ll click save, and then we’ll run it again to see what the highlight looks like. Now you can see it’s highlighted that color. I think that looks pretty good. So that’s all the text settings there.
Primary Alert Settings:
I’m going to actually get out of this by clicking text settings and then the little down arrow. Then we’re going to go back up to over here where we have all of the primary alert settings. You can change the alert message. So, “So and so is now following” or if you want to do like a really cringey message like, “Has now joined the freaking.” I don’t know, I’m not creative enough to think of one on the spot, but you get the point. You can also change the alert duration. So if you don’t want it to last the full 10 seconds such as myself, then we can click on five and then hit save. And now the alert will only last 5 seconds, which is a lot more relatable.
Variation Settings:
But we can move on to the variation settings. If you want to have a different follower alert play every time you get a new follower so that way you don’t have the same follow alert going off, you’re able to do that with variations. So you can click on “add new variation” and then you can click “variation name” and you’ll be able to copy the original follower alert. So that way you just have something to work off of and that way you can go and set a new image or change your video and basically create a second follower alert that will randomly get picked from when someone follows. So you can change the percentage of that happening with this by changing it from 100 to let’s say like 50. And that way if you get a follower once, 50% chance you get this alert or the other alert. That way you can kind of keep it a little bit more exciting. But honestly, I think it’s a little overkill for a lot of people. So don’t worry about it too much.
Text-to-Speech Settings:
So I’m actually going to cancel out of this, and then we’re going to click this little blue arrow next to variation settings and move on to the text-to-speech settings, which is a lot more entertaining. So we can click on “enable text-to-speech” and also change how loud the speaker is going to sound. Then you can change the text-to-speech voice. Everyone’s favorite seems to be Brian, but they have so many different voices to choose from in different languages, I’m pretty sure. So if you want, you can choose any of these delicious, delicious names, but I’m going to stick with Brian. And basically, text-to-speech will just announce whatever message is being said. So for example, if we save and emulate another follower event, it’s going to read out, “So and so has followed.” So I’m going to run that bad boy right here. We’re going to take a listen. “Molina is now following.” So if you want to use text-to-speech, you’re more than welcome to, but we’re going to move on to the next step, which is the text settings, which we already kind of went over. It’s just customizing how the text looks. You guys are smart enough to figure it out too.
Animation Settings:
So we’ll actually go on to the next section, which is the animation setting. So if you want to have an enter and exit animation for both your alert or your text or both, you’re able to do so. So if you want it to, let’s say, bounce in and then bounce out, we can change the duration to 1 second or longer. So that way if we hit save and run it, it will bounce in. So the alert will bounce in right there. See how it kind of like wiggled in or bounced in or whatever. And then if we wait for the alert to finish, it’s going to bounce out, which I think looks pretty cool. And I just got cut off by Brian, you son of a. You can feel free to mess with the animation settings here, but now it is time to integrate it into OBS Studio so we can get it working for your stream.
OBS Studio Integration:
After we’ve saved all of our settings, let’s open up OBS Studio. But I’ve opened up both of these windows for you guys so you can get a better idea of what’s going on. And if you ever get lost, all you have to do is click on “layers” and then “alert box” and it’ll bring you to your settings right here, and you’ll be able to customize everything again. So the first thing we’re going to do is click on this little chain or paperclip or whatever you want to call it, and it’s going to copy the overlay URL, which will be confirmed by saying it down there. And so then we’re going to go to the sources box in OBS Studio. We’re going to click that little plus button, and then we’re going to click on “browser source.” We’ll call this one alerts. You can do “SE” for Stream Elements if you want.
Then hit “OK,” and then we’re going to replace this URL with the new URL we just copied and then change the width to whatever resolution we’re using. In this case, we picked 1080 earlier at the beginning of the video, so I’m going to put 1920 for the width and then 1080 for the height. And then we’re going to hit “OK.” That way it’s going to have the same box as we have in Stream Elements. So see how they’re both at rectangle? We got the rectangle here, then we got the rectangle in OBS. Wherever I move this alert box, we’ll move it exactly in OBS Studio. So if I want it in the top left corner, I’ll move it to the top left corner in Stream Elements. I’ll remember to hit save, otherwise it won’t show it in here. Then we can emulate another follower event, but make sure preview live on stream is selected. So we’re going to click “follower event.” It’s going to pop up in here and it’s going to pop up on our screen in OBS Studio. However, if you wanted to move it to the bottom right corner, it’ll just change it in Stream Elements. Remember to hit save. Then we can emulate another follower event and it will place your alert in the bottom right corner of OBS.
Audio Settings:
Now, when it comes to the audio, this might be different for a couple of people, so pay attention. So if we play the follower event, it’s going to play the audio through Stream Elements and OBS. And so that’s why we’re getting a little kind of echo that you’ll be able to hear. Yeah, you can
kind of hear they were stacked. If we close this, then that’ll stop that one. However, since we’re using desktop audio, we’re able to hear our alert audio through our stream. Now, if you’re not using desktop audio, what you’ll do is you’re going to double click on the Streamlabs Alerts source that we did earlier. Then we’re going to do control audio via OBS, click OK, and then you’ll be able to see your alert volume when the alert happens. So this is only if you’re not using desktop audio because if you’re using desktop audio, then you’ll just get another echo. So if you’re not using desktop audio, go to your alerts and then you can go to Advanced Audio Properties and then you can go to the alerts section right here. So alerts and then if you want your chat to hear it and yourself, you’ll do “Monitor and Output.” That way you’ll monitor the audio of the alert as well as outputting it to your viewers. Now keep in mind if you have desktop audio, you probably don’t have to do this. But in the rare case that you do need to do this, this is your option. Since I am using desktop audio, I’m just going to disable that and we don’t have to worry about it.
When you’re done customizing all of your alerts, you actually don’t need to keep your Stream Elements webpage up. You just save your changes and then close it. And then anytime you get alerts, they will feed through OBS. So you actually don’t need to have this open whatsoever anymore. And we didn’t talk about the other alerts, but if you want, you can go and customize it the same way we did as the followers, but they also just have the default ones. So if you want to have like one for cheer 1,000 bits or more, then this default one will play, which I think is fine. And if you hear like a little bit of an echo, which we hear now, it’s because it’s playing audio through the Stream Elements webpage and OBS Studio.
As soon as we close Stream Elements and we get alerts popping up, it won’t echo because it’s not going to play it twice. Because right now it’s playing once through Stream Elements and then another time through OBS. And since I have them both up at the same time, that’s why you’re hearing that little kind of echo effect. Also, make sure that when you’re adding your alerts, they will always be the top source. So for example, if I have my alerts below my banner, they’re obviously going to be hidden behind my banner. So you’re never going to see them. So whenever you’re adding alerts, just make sure they are the top source. Otherwise, they’ll be hidden behind whatever is in front of it. But if you want to take your stream to the next level, then watch this video to the side of me. My name’s Cody, and I’ll see you in the next one.
