Bring live audience feedback into your broadcast

Some viewers open your audience page and take part. Many keep watching on a TV, use a phone with one hand, or arrive after you have shared the link. They can still follow the show, but the activity in your live room is otherwise invisible to them.

A stream overlay brings that activity into the broadcast. The meter moves, poll results fill in and the roll call scrolls where everyone can see them. Viewers understand what is happening before they join, and some will open the page once they see the room in motion.

One browser source for every show

An overlay is a web page with a transparent background. Streaming software renders it as a layer: OBS and Streamlabs load the URL directly as a browser source, while Streamyard accepts it as a shared browser window. There is no additional broadcast plugin to install.

The URL is host-level, not per-show. Paste it into OBS once and it keeps working for every show you run. You do not need a new weekly link or a scene-collection update ten minutes before going live. Between shows, the source stays valid and displays nothing.

Seven shapes for different scenes

Choose a shape that fits the space available in each scene. A bottom strip and a side column need different proportions, so the catalogue provides seven purpose-built options instead of asking you to resize one layout by hand:

• Lower third — a wide bottom strip and a practical starting point for a busy scene.
• Corner card — a compact option when the main content needs most of the frame.
• Side panel and full-height rail — columns that sit beside your camera when the scene has room on one side.
• Half screen — a larger view for an interstitial or break where audience data becomes the content.

Widgets adapt to their selected shape. The interest gauge appears as a horizontal bar in a wide lower third and as an arc in a roughly square card. An arc inside a 1920×220 strip would leave a small circle surrounded by empty space, so each format uses the available area differently.

Eight widgets, arranged your way

Choose which of eight widgets appear and set their order: the live interest gauge, the current segment name, the audience count, the roll call in arrival order, the top listener suggestions, the live poll and its results, a join call-to-action with your page link and a QR code, and your logo as a station ident.

The join widget takes little room and gives the overlay a direct next step. The other widgets report activity from people who have already found your page; the page link and QR code help the next viewers get there.

Saved themes and reliable contrast

Each overlay stores its own light or dark color mode. A browser source inside OBS has no viewer preference to read and reports light regardless of your machine setting. Saving the mode on the overlay ensures that the version you preview is the version that goes on air.

Overlays use your saved branding, so a branded page and broadcast stay aligned through one setting. The QR code in the join widget is the exception: it remains dark on white in every theme to preserve reliable scanning, even when that treatment differs from the rest of the overlay.

Preview first, put it on air with Pro

Overlays can be built, edited and previewed on any plan, including free. Only putting one on air requires Pro. A live preview gives you more to judge than a screenshot, while keeping the builder accessible avoids making an unavailable editor look broken. The plan gate applies when the overlay goes on air.

Pro covers the on-air needs of a single scene, where one overlay is enough. Studio raises the number of overlays that can be on air at once for a multi-scene setup.