Open Broadcaster Software

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) is an open source cross-platform video recording and live-streaming application. It provides an easy to pick up and extensible workflow with customizable scenes, volume mixers, transitions, filters and more.

Installation

OBS can be installed with the obs-studio package, or obs-studio-git^AUR for the development version.

Other clients that provide other functionality are available:

Tip: Since OBS is a Qt5 application, see Wayland#Qt to make it work under Wayland.

Configuration

For easy configuration, Tools > Auto-Configuration Wizard can quickly set up base settings for both recording and live-streaming. The wizard auto-selects bitrate, resolution and encoder based on your hardware (and network connection if streaming was set up).

Hardware acceleration

Hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding is best for performance, CPU/GPU usage and quality. The encoder can be changed in Settings > Output > Streaming > Encoder. See Hardware video acceleration if a hardware encoder is not detected.

Recording output

By default, OBS will output recordings in the user's home path with spaces in the video filename and the same encoder selected for streaming. The output path, filesize, file format, filename style and more can be changed in Settings > Output > Streaming > Encoder.

Hotkeys

By default, OBS assigns no hotkeys. All hotkey pairs highlighted in red upon selection can use the same keybind for toggling the pair's function.

Virtual camera output

Starting from version 26.1, OBS supports virtual camera output on Linux. To use it, install the v4l2loopback-dkms package and add your user to the video group, then the Start Virtual Camera button will appear in OBS. If the v4l2loopback kernel module is not loaded yet, OBS will automatically try to load it and ask for administrative privileges to do so (using pkexec(1)).

Tips and tricks

Browser source

The obs-browser plugin gives the ability to use a webpage within the canvas, typically for web-based overlays. The webpage can be interacted with and works like any other source type.

The default obs-studio package does not provide this plugin. It can be added via other clients or plugin packages:

obs-studio-git^AUR compiles with the browser plugin.
obs-linuxbrowser^AUR (or obs-linuxbrowser-bin^AUR for pre-compiled binary) provides the old linuxbrowser plugin. Works with the default client, but is abandoned and slightly outdated. The quickest way to get the plugin as of December 2021.
obs-studio-tytan652^AUR is a custom client that provides the browser plugin as well as browser docks, along with other general improvements.