Bring your audience’s live reaction into the broadcast

Most of what your audience does stays outside the broadcast. Chat moves quickly, live numbers remain in the host dashboard, and viewers only see the reactions you call out. A HeatCheck overlay brings the room’s activity into the scene: the interest meter moving, roll call filling up, and the open poll changing as people vote. Everyone can see the response taking shape together.

The integration is straightforward. Each overlay has a URL. Add a Browser source to your scene, paste the URL, and enter the width and height from the setup card. There is no plugin to install, no account to connect, and nothing to update. HeatCheck runs the page; OBS renders it.

One URL, pasted once

A HeatCheck overlay is attached to your account, not to an individual show. That matches the way OBS scenes already work. A browser source becomes part of a scene collection, and the collection can stay in use for years. If the URL expired after each broadcast, you would need to replace the source before every stream and risk discovering a missed update after going live.

The URL is permanent instead. Between shows, the overlay displays its resting state. When you go live, it picks up the show that is running. Configure it once, and the same browser source remains ready six months later, regardless of what you are streaming.

Use the dimensions provided

The shape you choose determines the browser source dimensions. A lower third is 1920 × 220 and sits along the bottom edge. A corner card is 480 × 320; a side panel is 520 × 760; a full-height rail is 420 × 1080; a half screen is 960 × 1080; and a full screen is 1920 × 1080 with its own scene. The setup card places the correct width and height beside the URL so you can enter them directly in the browser source dialog.

Those dimensions are fixed because a browser source renders at the size you enter before the scene transform scales it. A mismatched size can change the apparent weight of the text or leave a meter sharp on your monitor but soft in the stream. Using the dimensions from HeatCheck keeps the graphic at its designed proportions and preserves its clarity.

Choose what appears on air

Each overlay combines one shape with the widgets you choose:

• The interest meter shows the live 1–10 reading as an arc or a horizontal bar, depending on the width of the shape.
• Roll call shows who checked in, their order, and the points awarded for each place.
• The open poll displays the question and running tally, including for viewers watching on a delay.
• A join QR code gives viewers a direct path from the stream to the room on their phone.
• Your logo appears on plans that include branding.

Every shape begins with a practical widget set and limits how many it can hold. Five widgets cannot remain legible inside a lower third, so the builder prevents arrangements that do not work at the selected size. The constraint keeps the result readable before it reaches OBS.

Use it beyond OBS

Streamlabs Desktop works the same way. It supports browser sources, its setup dialog is nearly identical, and the steps do not change. Any other production tool that can render a URL in a scene works on the same terms.

Streamyard is the exception because it has no browser source. HeatCheck provides a separate opaque shape that you open in a browser window and share as a screen. It remains useful, but it is not the same as compositing a transparent layer. The Streamyard guide covers the complete setup.