Twitch Animated Overlays

What Are Twitch Overlays?

The most basic explanation is that an Animated Twitch Overlay is a video, mostly transparent, that is laid over your live stream. Generally, the non-transparent part of an overlay is around the edges of a screen, giving it a stylized appearance.

You can use an overlay for anything you have on-screen during your game: the game screen itself, your webcam, latest events (current number or amount of donations, new followers, and subscribers), or alerts for a new subscriber/follower, donation, raid, or the like.

What Magic Do They Do?

Viewers enjoy looking at a well-organized screen. An overlay makes this happen. And the result – more followers for you!

In the past, streamers wanted to put as much information on the screen as possible. Today, the trend is reversing. Less info is put on an overlay at a time. A streamer changes what is displayed on their screen to have viewers remember what they see.

And that is the magic: when you arrange everything so that it is easily visible and not cluttered with information, you will have your viewers remember the written parts subconsciously.

How to Add an Overlay to Your Stream:

As a great number of streamers use OBS for streaming, here are the steps to adding an overlay using the said software.

1. In the scene of your choice, add a new media source. It should be a video, of course. A new small window will pop up.
2. Name the video and upload it by clicking the Browse button. You can edit some more options there.
3. The overlay source should be over the game and camera sources, all in one scene.