{"slug": "obs-studio", "name": "OBS Studio", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "Free, open-source software for screen recording and live streaming on Windows, macOS and Linux.", "recommenders": 15, "commenters": 26, "warners": 2, "score": 14.227, "rising": 4.38, "first": "2025-11-14", "latest": "2026-10-25", "why": "Commenters treat it as the standard free tool for screen recording and streaming, and like its virtual camera and easy capture of slides, webcams and old tapes.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 15, "neutral": 9, "compare": 0, "warn": 2}, "spark": [2, 1, 0, 1, 1, 2, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 6], "listed": true, "loved": ["Screen recording", "Ease of use"], "caveat": "Difficult UX", "short_quote": "I love this software, it made it so easy to digitalize my 20+ year old family tapes", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/obsproject/obs-studio", "official_url": "https://obsproject.com/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["OBS Studio", "OBS"], "verdict": [{"text": "Commenters treat it as the standard free tool for screen recording and streaming", "cites": [{"id": 734833344, "item_id": 45927084, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45927084", "by": "stop50", "date": "2025-11-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For recording OBS is pretty much the standard.", "excerpt": "For recording OBS is pretty much the standard. Editing depends on the workflow", "context": "", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's a good app for recording YouTube tech videos?"}, {"id": 803532000, "item_id": 50220750, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220750", "by": "hofiflo", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love OBS! I\u2019ve been using it for years now to record talks", "excerpt": "I love OBS! I\u2019ve been using it for years now to record talks and it just makes it so easy to screen capture slides (even under wayland) and combine it with different video/audio inputs. Granted, I\u2019m not a power user, but I\u2019m (luckily) not encountering the bugs people here seem to be annoyed about :)", "context": "not a power user", "use_case": "recording talks and slides", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803581392, "item_id": 50223837, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223837", "by": "setopt", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Thanks to the OBS devs! I work at a university and occasionally make video lectures for my classes. I used to do it in Zoom, but it sometimes had weird glitches where it just\u2026 deletes the videos I recorded. It\u2019s happened several times that I lost an hour or more of recordings and had to redo it, once it deleted all the recordings that I did that week. Also, it was a bit of work to position screen sharing vs my webcam", "context": "works at a university, makes lecture videos", "use_case": "recording video lectures", "switched_from": "Zoom", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 736471217, "item_id": 46029451, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46029451", "by": "gus_massa", "date": "2025-11-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For live streaming https://obsproject.com/ but I don't remember too much.", "excerpt": "I used https://www.shotcut.org/ to edit a few videos, it has many effects. For live streaming https://obsproject.com/ but I don't remember too much.", "context": "", "use_case": "live streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you teach a 7 year old visual editing on PC?"}]}, {"text": ", and like its virtual camera and easy capture of slides, webcams and old tapes.", "cites": [{"id": 803538961, "item_id": 50221185, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50221185", "by": "jimmySixDOF", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use OBS virtual camera its one of my fav features", "excerpt": "ShareX has been around for ever but just updated the UI and now super easy to do capture work with annotations and cam output etc (no studio but it's light weight) btw I use OBS virtual camera its one of my fav features with masking etc for a video avatar vlogger effect https://getsharex.com/", "context": "", "use_case": "virtual camera for video avatar", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 750575728, "item_id": 46910983, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46910983", "by": "prmoustache", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the most user friendly way is to use obs", "excerpt": "you can do it with ffmpeg but the most user friendly way is to use obs. https://obsproject.com/kb/virtual-camera-guide https://usercomp.com/news/1413136/ffmpeg-virtual-camera-guide I used that back in the days in 2019 / early 2020 when it was not yet possible to share your screen on msteams under wayland in chrome and firefox.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtual webcam", "switched_from": "", "story": "France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US"}, {"id": 803605056, "item_id": 50225316, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50225316", "by": "zubie7a", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love this software, it made it so easy to digitalize my 20+ year old family tapes", "excerpt": "I love this software, it made it so easy to digitalize my 20+ year old family tapes from an ancient MiniDV recorder", "context": "", "use_case": "digitizing MiniDV tapes", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}]}, {"text": " Common complaints are a difficult UX", "cites": [{"id": 802592867, "item_id": 50162054, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50162054", "by": "greggman65", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "OBS was recommended but OBS has a difficult UX.", "excerpt": "It's great to love programming. I started in the late 70s. That said, I'm also fully enjoying letting AI help me solve problems. Here's one: I study Japanese. I used jisho.org for years (A Japanese/English dictionary). I ran into a problem ~2 weeks ago where I needed to look up a word and used their handwriting recognition to sketch a kanji. I got a single stroke wrong and it gave no matches. I checked if it was open", "context": "", "use_case": "capturing system audio", "switched_from": "", "story": "It's still ok to enjoy programming"}, {"id": 803507089, "item_id": 50219193, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219193", "by": "adeptima", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Using OBS only when it\u2019s a must", "excerpt": "Using OBS only when it\u2019s a must Much happier with Cap for screencast recording https://github.com/capsoftware/cap", "context": "", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}]}, {"text": ", a contributor policy that bans AI-written code", "cites": [{"id": 803521969, "item_id": 50220123, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220123", "by": "SuperV1234", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Great, another project with an asinine and backwards-thinking AI policy", "excerpt": "Great, another project with an asinine and backwards-thinking AI policy: > All text and content submitted to our project, which includes code, descriptions, issues, and comments, must be human written. > The use of GitHub Copilot and other assistive AI technologies is heavily discouraged. Use this instead: https://github.com/obs-rust/obs-studio", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803566880, "item_id": 50222930, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50222930", "by": "sergiotapia", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Their policy outright bans AI.", "excerpt": "There was a guy who was banned from the OBS github for submitting an AI pr, so he forked it, rewrote it in Rust and is fixing bugs left and right. https://github.com/obs-rust/obs-studio Their policy outright bans AI. So regardless if you support or oppose this policy, it is going to be fun to see if the fork becomes significantly better than the original or not. https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/blob/master/CO", "context": "", "use_case": "screen recording and streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}]}, {"text": ", and limits for professional live shows.", "cites": [{"id": 746156689, "item_id": 46634793, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46634793", "by": "mervz", "date": "2026-01-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "OBS is a great solution if you're on a budget or doing very simple streams", "excerpt": "OBS is a great solution if you're on a budget or doing very simple streams, but I really urge anybody who is serious about live streaming professional shows to check out vMix. It's an incredible piece of software that is versatile and packed full of so many features professional broadcasts need all baked in.", "context": "", "use_case": "simple live streams", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 32.1.0 Beta 1 available"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Screen recording", "summary": "Seen as the standard for recording talks, lectures, screencasts and demos.", "quotes": [{"id": 734833344, "item_id": 45927084, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45927084", "by": "stop50", "date": "2025-11-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For recording OBS is pretty much the standard.", "excerpt": "For recording OBS is pretty much the standard. Editing depends on the workflow", "context": "", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's a good app for recording YouTube tech videos?"}, {"id": 803532000, "item_id": 50220750, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220750", "by": "hofiflo", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love OBS! I\u2019ve been using it for years now to record talks", "excerpt": "I love OBS! I\u2019ve been using it for years now to record talks and it just makes it so easy to screen capture slides (even under wayland) and combine it with different video/audio inputs. Granted, I\u2019m not a power user, but I\u2019m (luckily) not encountering the bugs people here seem to be annoyed about :)", "context": "not a power user", "use_case": "recording talks and slides", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803581392, "item_id": 50223837, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223837", "by": "setopt", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Thanks to the OBS devs! I work at a university and occasionally make video lectures for my classes. I used to do it in Zoom, but it sometimes had weird glitches where it just\u2026 deletes the videos I recorded. It\u2019s happened several times that I lost an hour or more of recordings and had to redo it, once it deleted all the recordings that I did that week. Also, it was a bit of work to position screen sharing vs my webcam", "context": "works at a university, makes lecture videos", "use_case": "recording video lectures", "switched_from": "Zoom", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}]}, {"label": "Ease of use", "summary": "Users find capture work easy, especially once scenes are set up.", "quotes": [{"id": 803605056, "item_id": 50225316, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50225316", "by": "zubie7a", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love this software, it made it so easy to digitalize my 20+ year old family tapes", "excerpt": "I love this software, it made it so easy to digitalize my 20+ year old family tapes from an ancient MiniDV recorder", "context": "", "use_case": "digitizing MiniDV tapes", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803581392, "item_id": 50223837, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223837", "by": "setopt", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Thanks to the OBS devs! I work at a university and occasionally make video lectures for my classes. I used to do it in Zoom, but it sometimes had weird glitches where it just\u2026 deletes the videos I recorded. It\u2019s happened several times that I lost an hour or more of recordings and had to redo it, once it deleted all the recordings that I did that week. Also, it was a bit of work to position screen sharing vs my webcam", "context": "works at a university, makes lecture videos", "use_case": "recording video lectures", "switched_from": "Zoom", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 750575728, "item_id": 46910983, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46910983", "by": "prmoustache", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the most user friendly way is to use obs", "excerpt": "you can do it with ffmpeg but the most user friendly way is to use obs. https://obsproject.com/kb/virtual-camera-guide https://usercomp.com/news/1413136/ffmpeg-virtual-camera-guide I used that back in the days in 2019 / early 2020 when it was not yet possible to share your screen on msteams under wayland in chrome and firefox.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtual webcam", "switched_from": "", "story": "France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US"}]}, {"label": "Virtual camera", "summary": "The virtual camera feature is a favorite and works with v4l2 on Linux.", "quotes": [{"id": 803538961, "item_id": 50221185, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50221185", "by": "jimmySixDOF", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use OBS virtual camera its one of my fav features", "excerpt": "ShareX has been around for ever but just updated the UI and now super easy to do capture work with annotations and cam output etc (no studio but it's light weight) btw I use OBS virtual camera its one of my fav features with masking etc for a video avatar vlogger effect https://getsharex.com/", "context": "", "use_case": "virtual camera for video avatar", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 750575728, "item_id": 46910983, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46910983", "by": "prmoustache", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the most user friendly way is to use obs", "excerpt": "you can do it with ffmpeg but the most user friendly way is to use obs. https://obsproject.com/kb/virtual-camera-guide https://usercomp.com/news/1413136/ffmpeg-virtual-camera-guide I used that back in the days in 2019 / early 2020 when it was not yet possible to share your screen on msteams under wayland in chrome and firefox.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtual webcam", "switched_from": "", "story": "France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US"}, {"id": 762872784, "item_id": 47679549, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47679549", "by": "hparadiz", "date": "2026-04-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use v4l2 regularly with OBS.", "excerpt": "When you say +pipewire you mean just audio playback? If you are pushing video to a picture-in-picture overlay a user might expect that so yea you could write to the pipewire socket like any other program. It's usually fully open for you to do just that. I use v4l2 regularly with OBS. In order for Chrome/Chromium to see it you need to make the device before launching Chrome/Chromium. You can start v4l2 devices automat", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "virtual camera video output", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Pion/handoff \u2013 Move WebRTC out of browser and into Go"}]}, {"label": "Linux and Wayland", "summary": "Screen recording works on Wayland under both KDE and GNOME.", "quotes": [{"id": 759234672, "item_id": 47452167, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452167", "by": "a2128", "date": "2026-03-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I screen record with OBS on both KDE and GNOME on multiple machines with no issues", "excerpt": "OBS can't screen record (it segfaults instead), I can't copy-paste, and I can't see window previews unless everything implements a specific extension to the core protocol. I can't take articles like this seriously when they so confidently make such statements that so directly conflict with reality. I use Wayland exclusively everyday and I screen record with OBS on both KDE and GNOME on multiple machines with no issue", "context": "Wayland user", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years"}, {"id": 803532000, "item_id": 50220750, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220750", "by": "hofiflo", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love OBS! I\u2019ve been using it for years now to record talks", "excerpt": "I love OBS! I\u2019ve been using it for years now to record talks and it just makes it so easy to screen capture slides (even under wayland) and combine it with different video/audio inputs. Granted, I\u2019m not a power user, but I\u2019m (luckily) not encountering the bugs people here seem to be annoyed about :)", "context": "not a power user", "use_case": "recording talks and slides", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 750575728, "item_id": 46910983, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46910983", "by": "prmoustache", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the most user friendly way is to use obs", "excerpt": "you can do it with ffmpeg but the most user friendly way is to use obs. https://obsproject.com/kb/virtual-camera-guide https://usercomp.com/news/1413136/ffmpeg-virtual-camera-guide I used that back in the days in 2019 / early 2020 when it was not yet possible to share your screen on msteams under wayland in chrome and firefox.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtual webcam", "switched_from": "", "story": "France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US"}]}, {"label": "Capture monitoring", "summary": "Useful for monitoring capture cards and streaming an iPhone into a Mac.", "quotes": [{"id": 769957360, "item_id": 48122335, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48122335", "by": "LoganDark", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use OBS to monitor my video capture.", "excerpt": "> I was doing this bit using a capture card and Photo Booth on macOS which doesn\u2019t actually support disabling the image-flip on the video feed I use OBS to monitor my video capture. This essentially lets me use my Mac as a monitor for my headless desktop (which does not have a monitor of its own). Maximum gaming. Deskflow lets me use my Mac as a keyboard over LAN, too. Beats remote desktop for sure. Especially when g", "context": "", "use_case": "monitoring video capture", "switched_from": "Photo Booth", "story": "Web Server on a Nintendo Wii"}, {"id": 803512608, "item_id": 50219538, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219538", "by": "ydoc5212", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love that I can stream from my iPhone directly into OBS on my Mac.", "excerpt": "I love that I can stream from my iPhone directly into OBS on my Mac. I don't love that Metal shaders aren't supported, and I have to rely on janky extensions to get them working.", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "streaming iPhone to Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}]}, {"label": "FOSS and quality", "summary": "Valued for being FOSS with excellent video quality.", "quotes": [{"id": 803581392, "item_id": 50223837, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223837", "by": "setopt", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Thanks to the OBS devs! I work at a university and occasionally make video lectures for my classes. I used to do it in Zoom, but it sometimes had weird glitches where it just\u2026 deletes the videos I recorded. It\u2019s happened several times that I lost an hour or more of recordings and had to redo it, once it deleted all the recordings that I did that week. Also, it was a bit of work to position screen sharing vs my webcam", "context": "works at a university, makes lecture videos", "use_case": "recording video lectures", "switched_from": "Zoom", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 765046529, "item_id": 47815408, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47815408", "by": "aleda145", "date": "2026-04-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I'm using it together with OBS to post short demo videos of my side project.", "excerpt": "I recently switched from Shotcut to Kdenlive. Kdenlive's UX is much more intuitive. Lots of features, I still feel like a beginner, which is such a fun feeling! I'm using it together with OBS to post short demo videos of my side project. I could use Loom I guess, but I prefer to keep my tech stack FOSS when I can. Creating \"non standard\" video resolutions is a bit of a pain though. But I've solved that with an ffmpeg", "context": "prefers FOSS stack", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "State of Kdenlive"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Difficult UX", "summary": "Some find the interface difficult and use OBS only when they must.", "quotes": [{"id": 802592867, "item_id": 50162054, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50162054", "by": "greggman65", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "OBS was recommended but OBS has a difficult UX.", "excerpt": "It's great to love programming. I started in the late 70s. That said, I'm also fully enjoying letting AI help me solve problems. Here's one: I study Japanese. I used jisho.org for years (A Japanese/English dictionary). I ran into a problem ~2 weeks ago where I needed to look up a word and used their handwriting recognition to sketch a kanji. I got a single stroke wrong and it gave no matches. I checked if it was open", "context": "", "use_case": "capturing system audio", "switched_from": "", "story": "It's still ok to enjoy programming"}, {"id": 803507089, "item_id": 50219193, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219193", "by": "adeptima", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Using OBS only when it\u2019s a must", "excerpt": "Using OBS only when it\u2019s a must Much happier with Cap for screencast recording https://github.com/capsoftware/cap", "context": "", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}]}, {"label": "AI policy", "summary": "The project bans AI-written contributions, which some commenters dislike.", "quotes": [{"id": 803521969, "item_id": 50220123, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220123", "by": "SuperV1234", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Great, another project with an asinine and backwards-thinking AI policy", "excerpt": "Great, another project with an asinine and backwards-thinking AI policy: > All text and content submitted to our project, which includes code, descriptions, issues, and comments, must be human written. > The use of GitHub Copilot and other assistive AI technologies is heavily discouraged. Use this instead: https://github.com/obs-rust/obs-studio", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803566880, "item_id": 50222930, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50222930", "by": "sergiotapia", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Their policy outright bans AI.", "excerpt": "There was a guy who was banned from the OBS github for submitting an AI pr, so he forked it, rewrote it in Rust and is fixing bugs left and right. https://github.com/obs-rust/obs-studio Their policy outright bans AI. So regardless if you support or oppose this policy, it is going to be fun to see if the fork becomes significantly better than the original or not. https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/blob/master/CO", "context": "", "use_case": "screen recording and streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}]}, {"label": "Professional streaming", "summary": "One commenter says serious professional broadcasts are better served by vMix.", "quotes": [{"id": 746156689, "item_id": 46634793, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46634793", "by": "mervz", "date": "2026-01-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "OBS is a great solution if you're on a budget or doing very simple streams", "excerpt": "OBS is a great solution if you're on a budget or doing very simple streams, but I really urge anybody who is serious about live streaming professional shows to check out vMix. It's an incredible piece of software that is versatile and packed full of so many features professional broadcasts need all baked in.", "context": "", "use_case": "simple live streams", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 32.1.0 Beta 1 available"}]}, {"label": "Metal shaders", "summary": "Metal shaders aren't supported on Mac without janky extensions.", "quotes": [{"id": 803512608, "item_id": 50219538, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219538", "by": "ydoc5212", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love that I can stream from my iPhone directly into OBS on my Mac.", "excerpt": "I love that I can stream from my iPhone directly into OBS on my Mac. I don't love that Metal shaders aren't supported, and I have to rely on janky extensions to get them working.", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "streaming iPhone to Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}]}, {"label": "Audio desync", "summary": "Webcam audio can sometimes go out of sync during recording.", "quotes": [{"id": 770583314, "item_id": 48161457, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161457", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-05-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "recording a video with OBS, sometimes my webcam's audio will get desync'd", "excerpt": "I moved to Linux from Windows 6 months ago. Here are some minor things that always went sour on Windows: Webcam's settings would always get reset semi-randomly The date from the clock would frequently disappear Mic's volume would often get lowered Other than that, with Windows 10 Pro it was super solid on 12 year old hardware. Never crashed, all games I could play were fine and I did heavy Docker based development, h", "context": "", "use_case": "recording screencasts", "switched_from": "", "story": "I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows"}]}], "who": [{"by": "setopt", "context": "works at a university, makes lecture videos", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223837", "date": "2026-10-24"}, {"by": "hofiflo", "context": "not a power user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220750", "date": "2026-10-24"}, {"by": "ydoc5212", "context": "Mac user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219538", "date": "2026-10-24"}, {"by": "aleda145", "context": "prefers FOSS stack", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47815408", "date": "2026-04-18"}, {"by": "hparadiz", "context": "Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47679549", "date": "2026-04-07"}, {"by": "SilentM68", "context": "Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47644674", "date": "2026-04-04"}, {"by": "a2128", "context": "Wayland user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452167", "date": "2026-03-20"}], "tags": ["for Linux users", "for recording lectures", "for live streaming", "for demo videos", "for Mac users"], "use_cases": ["screen recording", "streaming/recording", "digitizing minidv tapes", "recording video lectures", "screen recording and streaming", "virtual camera for video avatar"], "compared": [{"slug": "kdenlive", "name": "Kdenlive", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "openscreen", "name": "OpenScreen", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "cap", "name": "Cap", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "firefox", "name": "Firefox", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 740931232, "item_id": 46308202, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46308202", "by": "Sean-Der", "date": "2025-12-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is something I have been working on for years and am sssooo excited to see merged.", "excerpt": "This is something I have been working on for years and am sssooo excited to see merged. This starts a new generation of broadcasting (I hope) * Cheaper servers. More competition and I want to see people running their own servers. * Better video quality. Encoding from source is going to be better then transcoding. * No more bad servers. Send video to your audience and server isn't able to do modification/surveillance ", "context": "contributor of the simulcast feature", "use_case": "WebRTC simulcast broadcasting", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio Merges WebRTC/Whip Simulcast Support"}, {"id": 740869088, "item_id": 46304318, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46304318", "by": "Sean-Der", "date": "2025-12-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is something I have been working on for years and am sssooo excited to see merged.", "excerpt": "This is something I have been working on for years and am sssooo excited to see merged. This starts a new generation of broadcasting (I hope) * Cheaper servers. More competition and I want to see people running their own servers. * Better video quality. Encoding from source is going to be better then transcoding. * No more bad servers. Send video to your audience and server isn't able to do modification/surveillance ", "context": "contributor of the simulcast feature", "use_case": "WebRTC simulcast broadcasting", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Add Simulcast Support"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50218430", "title": "OBS Studio 33", "mentions": 8}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47595695", "title": "OpenScreen is an open-source alternative to Screen Studio", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50234120", "title": "Flint \u00b7 free browser streaming software for Twitch, an OBS alternative", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50134472", "title": "It's still ok to enjoy programming", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49946895", "title": "The work by Valve's Timur Krist\u00f3f on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479924", "title": "EasyEffects can improve laptop speaker sound quality", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 2}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 3, "warn": 2, "recommend": 6}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803769104, "item_id": 50235569, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235569", "by": "iugtmkbdfil834", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Each time I use it, there is very little in terms of use cases that don't fit me.", "excerpt": "I am more curious than anything else, but why rewrite OBS? Each time I use it, there is very little in terms of use cases that don't fit me. Was it written with something in mind that OBS doesn't cover?", "context": "", "use_case": "streaming/recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "Flint \u00b7 free browser streaming software for Twitch, an OBS alternative"}, {"id": 803605056, "item_id": 50225316, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50225316", "by": "zubie7a", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love this software, it made it so easy to digitalize my 20+ year old family tapes", "excerpt": "I love this software, it made it so easy to digitalize my 20+ year old family tapes from an ancient MiniDV recorder", "context": "", "use_case": "digitizing MiniDV tapes", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803581392, "item_id": 50223837, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223837", "by": "setopt", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Thanks to the OBS devs! I work at a university and occasionally make video lectures for my classes. I used to do it in Zoom, but it sometimes had weird glitches where it just\u2026 deletes the videos I recorded. It\u2019s happened several times that I lost an hour or more of recordings and had to redo it, once it deleted all the recordings that I did that week. Also, it was a bit of work to position screen sharing vs my webcam", "context": "works at a university, makes lecture videos", "use_case": "recording video lectures", "switched_from": "Zoom", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803566880, "item_id": 50222930, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50222930", "by": "sergiotapia", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Their policy outright bans AI.", "excerpt": "There was a guy who was banned from the OBS github for submitting an AI pr, so he forked it, rewrote it in Rust and is fixing bugs left and right. https://github.com/obs-rust/obs-studio Their policy outright bans AI. So regardless if you support or oppose this policy, it is going to be fun to see if the fork becomes significantly better than the original or not. https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/blob/master/CO", "context": "", "use_case": "screen recording and streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803538961, "item_id": 50221185, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50221185", "by": "jimmySixDOF", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use OBS virtual camera its one of my fav features", "excerpt": "ShareX has been around for ever but just updated the UI and now super easy to do capture work with annotations and cam output etc (no studio but it's light weight) btw I use OBS virtual camera its one of my fav features with masking etc for a video avatar vlogger effect https://getsharex.com/", "context": "", "use_case": "virtual camera for video avatar", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803532000, "item_id": 50220750, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220750", "by": "hofiflo", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love OBS! I\u2019ve been using it for years now to record talks", "excerpt": "I love OBS! I\u2019ve been using it for years now to record talks and it just makes it so easy to screen capture slides (even under wayland) and combine it with different video/audio inputs. Granted, I\u2019m not a power user, but I\u2019m (luckily) not encountering the bugs people here seem to be annoyed about :)", "context": "not a power user", "use_case": "recording talks and slides", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803521969, "item_id": 50220123, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220123", "by": "SuperV1234", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Great, another project with an asinine and backwards-thinking AI policy", "excerpt": "Great, another project with an asinine and backwards-thinking AI policy: > All text and content submitted to our project, which includes code, descriptions, issues, and comments, must be human written. > The use of GitHub Copilot and other assistive AI technologies is heavily discouraged. Use this instead: https://github.com/obs-rust/obs-studio", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803512608, "item_id": 50219538, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219538", "by": "ydoc5212", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love that I can stream from my iPhone directly into OBS on my Mac.", "excerpt": "I love that I can stream from my iPhone directly into OBS on my Mac. I don't love that Metal shaders aren't supported, and I have to rely on janky extensions to get them working.", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "streaming iPhone to Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 803507089, "item_id": 50219193, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219193", "by": "adeptima", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Using OBS only when it\u2019s a must", "excerpt": "Using OBS only when it\u2019s a must Much happier with Cap for screencast recording https://github.com/capsoftware/cap", "context": "", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 33"}, {"id": 802592867, "item_id": 50162054, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50162054", "by": "greggman65", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "OBS was recommended but OBS has a difficult UX.", "excerpt": "It's great to love programming. I started in the late 70s. That said, I'm also fully enjoying letting AI help me solve problems. Here's one: I study Japanese. I used jisho.org for years (A Japanese/English dictionary). I ran into a problem ~2 weeks ago where I needed to look up a word and used their handwriting recognition to sketch a kanji. I got a single stroke wrong and it gave no matches. I checked if it was open", "context": "", "use_case": "capturing system audio", "switched_from": "", "story": "It's still ok to enjoy programming"}, {"id": 799474261, "item_id": 49967141, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49967141", "by": "nickserv", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "light video editing (OBS, Kdenlive)", "excerpt": "I use it for a bit of everything: dev work (InteliJ), basic 3D modeling/printing (freeCAD, Blender, Orca), light video editing (OBS, Kdenlive), gaming (wine) ... Could probably go with an Arch based distro, but the Ubuntu/Debian base is useful for the good compatibility.", "context": "", "use_case": "video", "switched_from": "", "story": "The work by Valve's Timur Krist\u00f3f on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux"}, {"id": 791719074, "item_id": 49482442, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49482442", "by": "downloadram", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "obs audio filters with stacked vsts and routing filters can unironically do this programs job better", "excerpt": "i use EE on my parents tv (minipc connected to offline 4koled) to address the \"movie too quiet then way too loud\" for them but there is a cost, latency fortunately its not large enough to notice unless you already know (i.e. problem for me but not for thee) AND fortunately MPV .conf can set audio offset globally to sync everything nicely, so its not bothering them; but i disable it if im going to play games where i n", "context": "", "use_case": "audio filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "EasyEffects can improve laptop speaker sound quality"}, {"id": 780223426, "item_id": 48763964, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48763964", "by": "raphinou", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "(on Linux, obs, kdenlive)", "excerpt": "I am currently recording tutorial videos for an open source project. It's produced fully with Foss software (on Linux, obs, kdenlive) and about an open source project, so I wanted to host it with peertube (though YouTube might be used later on for its network effect, it was easier to publish with peertube as yt required an video of me and my ID). It's going fine until now. I don't host peertube myself though, I use a", "context": "", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform"}, {"id": 770583314, "item_id": 48161457, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161457", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-05-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "recording a video with OBS, sometimes my webcam's audio will get desync'd", "excerpt": "I moved to Linux from Windows 6 months ago. Here are some minor things that always went sour on Windows: Webcam's settings would always get reset semi-randomly The date from the clock would frequently disappear Mic's volume would often get lowered Other than that, with Windows 10 Pro it was super solid on 12 year old hardware. Never crashed, all games I could play were fine and I did heavy Docker based development, h", "context": "", "use_case": "recording screencasts", "switched_from": "", "story": "I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows"}, {"id": 769957360, "item_id": 48122335, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48122335", "by": "LoganDark", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use OBS to monitor my video capture.", "excerpt": "> I was doing this bit using a capture card and Photo Booth on macOS which doesn\u2019t actually support disabling the image-flip on the video feed I use OBS to monitor my video capture. This essentially lets me use my Mac as a monitor for my headless desktop (which does not have a monitor of its own). Maximum gaming. Deskflow lets me use my Mac as a keyboard over LAN, too. Beats remote desktop for sure. Especially when g", "context": "", "use_case": "monitoring video capture", "switched_from": "Photo Booth", "story": "Web Server on a Nintendo Wii"}, {"id": 766309968, "item_id": 47894373, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47894373", "by": "chancitag", "date": "2026-04-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Love OBS and Blender.", "excerpt": "Love OBS and Blender. Recently started using Kdenlive and it is awesome. Big fan of OpenSCAD[1] and solvespace[2] for making functional 3D prints. I'm going to branch out a bit here and say GrapheneOS is my favorite thing going on right now. [1] https://openscad.org/ [2] https://solvespace.com/index.pl", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are your top open source apps/software?"}, {"id": 765046529, "item_id": 47815408, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47815408", "by": "aleda145", "date": "2026-04-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I'm using it together with OBS to post short demo videos of my side project.", "excerpt": "I recently switched from Shotcut to Kdenlive. Kdenlive's UX is much more intuitive. Lots of features, I still feel like a beginner, which is such a fun feeling! I'm using it together with OBS to post short demo videos of my side project. I could use Loom I guess, but I prefer to keep my tech stack FOSS when I can. Creating \"non standard\" video resolutions is a bit of a pain though. But I've solved that with an ffmpeg", "context": "prefers FOSS stack", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "State of Kdenlive"}, {"id": 762872784, "item_id": 47679549, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47679549", "by": "hparadiz", "date": "2026-04-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use v4l2 regularly with OBS.", "excerpt": "When you say +pipewire you mean just audio playback? If you are pushing video to a picture-in-picture overlay a user might expect that so yea you could write to the pipewire socket like any other program. It's usually fully open for you to do just that. I use v4l2 regularly with OBS. In order for Chrome/Chromium to see it you need to make the device before launching Chrome/Chromium. You can start v4l2 devices automat", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "virtual camera video output", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Pion/handoff \u2013 Move WebRTC out of browser and into Go"}, {"id": 762315712, "item_id": 47644732, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47644732", "by": "josephcsible", "date": "2026-04-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "No it hasn't: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/commits/master/", "excerpt": "> OBS (what I used) seems to have stopped receiving updates :) No it hasn't: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/commits/master/", "context": "", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenScreen is an open-source alternative to Screen Studio"}, {"id": 762314785, "item_id": 47644674, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47644674", "by": "SilentM68", "date": "2026-04-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "OBS (what I used) seems to have stopped receiving updates", "excerpt": "Nifty app! Just tried the AppImage version on Linux, simple to use, and works Ok on my end. Suggest you add preferences dropdown to floating bar, and ability to highlight parts of an area for record, ability to set the default save location or change it at will. Will keep an eye on its progress since OBS (what I used) seems to have stopped receiving updates :)", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenScreen is an open-source alternative to Screen Studio"}, {"id": 759234672, "item_id": 47452167, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452167", "by": "a2128", "date": "2026-03-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I screen record with OBS on both KDE and GNOME on multiple machines with no issues", "excerpt": "OBS can't screen record (it segfaults instead), I can't copy-paste, and I can't see window previews unless everything implements a specific extension to the core protocol. I can't take articles like this seriously when they so confidently make such statements that so directly conflict with reality. I use Wayland exclusively everyday and I screen record with OBS on both KDE and GNOME on multiple machines with no issue", "context": "Wayland user", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years"}, {"id": 750575728, "item_id": 46910983, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46910983", "by": "prmoustache", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the most user friendly way is to use obs", "excerpt": "you can do it with ffmpeg but the most user friendly way is to use obs. https://obsproject.com/kb/virtual-camera-guide https://usercomp.com/news/1413136/ffmpeg-virtual-camera-guide I used that back in the days in 2019 / early 2020 when it was not yet possible to share your screen on msteams under wayland in chrome and firefox.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtual webcam", "switched_from": "", "story": "France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US"}, {"id": 746156689, "item_id": 46634793, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46634793", "by": "mervz", "date": "2026-01-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "OBS is a great solution if you're on a budget or doing very simple streams", "excerpt": "OBS is a great solution if you're on a budget or doing very simple streams, but I really urge anybody who is serious about live streaming professional shows to check out vMix. It's an incredible piece of software that is versatile and packed full of so many features professional broadcasts need all baked in.", "context": "", "use_case": "simple live streams", "switched_from": "", "story": "OBS Studio 32.1.0 Beta 1 available"}, {"id": 742375807, "item_id": 46398487, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46398487", "by": "metasaval", "date": "2025-12-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "OBS Studio - streaming and recording", "excerpt": "Hey! I guess I'll get some conversation started, this interests me too and I've been doing the same the last few years. I added a page to my site [0] to keep updated with all the tech I use so I'll do some copy-pasting of some standouts. Note that I use Linux and Android, no Apple products here. - EndeavourOS - easy to install arch-based linux distro - KDE - desktop environment - Framework 13 - repairable laptop - Pi", "context": "", "use_case": "streaming and recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Is Your 2026 Personal Software Stack?"}, {"id": 736471217, "item_id": 46029451, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46029451", "by": "gus_massa", "date": "2025-11-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For live streaming https://obsproject.com/ but I don't remember too much.", "excerpt": "I used https://www.shotcut.org/ to edit a few videos, it has many effects. For live streaming https://obsproject.com/ but I don't remember too much.", "context": "", "use_case": "live streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you teach a 7 year old visual editing on PC?"}, {"id": 734833344, "item_id": 45927084, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45927084", "by": "stop50", "date": "2025-11-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For recording OBS is pretty much the standard.", "excerpt": "For recording OBS is pretty much the standard. Editing depends on the workflow", "context": "", "use_case": "screen recording", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's a good app for recording YouTube tech videos?"}]}