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  • Official usage and troubleshooting guides for OBS Studio, created by our volunteer support team.
  • Chat with OBS Contributors and our volunteer support members

    OBS Discord
  • Connect with our community to get help with issues, discuss tools, and provide feedback.

  • Visit our GitHub repository for the latest updates or to view the source code.

  • Create and vote on suggestions to improve OBS on our Ideas portal, powered by Fider.

  • List of devices that have been tested and certified to work with the latest version of OBS Studio.

    View list
  • Developer documentation on OBS Studio. View info on the APIs, plugins, backend, etc.

    OBS Studio Docs


Is OBS really free?

Absolutely! OBS is open-source software developed by volunteer contributors around the world in their free time. OBS is distributed under the GPLv2 license. The summary of the license is that OBS is free for anyone to use, for any reason. Other developers can use the OBS code in their own projects as long as they obey the guidelines set forth in the GPLv2 license. OBS has no watermarks or other limitations and can be used commercially with no restrictions.

Is OBS safe to use? Is it virus free?

Yes! OBS is an open source project, which means the programming code is open for anyone to look at or improve, so you can see exactly how it works. Any changes to the code are reviewed by other OBS contributors, so no one can add anything malicious. As long as you download OBS from this website, you will receive the latest version which is safe to use and free of malware. OBS contains no advertisements or bundled software / adware - if you've been asked to pay for OBS, this is a scam and you should request a refund or charge back the payment.

OBS is dropping frames. How can I fix this?

When the "Dropped frames" counter is increasing and the connection square is yellow or red, this means that your connection to the server* isn't stable or that it can't keep up with your set bitrate. Because of this, OBS was forced to drop some of the video frames in order to compensate. OBS opts to drop the frames to avoid buffering and keep your stream playing. You can check out our detailed guide here for more info, and what options you have to correct the issue:

* When we say "server", this means the server of the service that you're streaming to (eg Twitch, YouTube, etc). There are no OBS servers - the connection goes directly from your computer to the streaming service. Even if the OBS website and everything else run by us went offline, you can still stream with OBS as there is no dependency on anything run by the OBS Project. Any connection problems are between you and the service you're streaming to.

The quality on my stream or recording is bad! How can I fix it?

The quickest way to make sure you have good settings is to use the Tools / Auto Configuration Wizard in OBS. This will get most basic settings correct for you. If you are streaming, check out our Streaming with x264 guide for a primer on video encoding and how to adjust settings further to get the most out of your stream.

If you are recording, try using Simple output mode and the recording presets. If you have an available hardware encoder, try to use that for your recordings. For more in-depth options, see our local recording guide.

I updated and now nothing in OBS is working, what happened?

We are very careful when making updates, and test everything as extensively as we can. OBS updates should leave your settings intact, but it's possible that something else on your system may have interfered with the update process. Most commonly, updates will cause antivirus and security programs to look closer at OBS. Some can even flag the behavior, falsely, as malicious. Make sure that if you are running an antivirus, the OBS folder is whitelisted. You may need to remove and re-add any .exe files to the whitelist after each update as some products ignore the whitelist if the file has changed since it was added.

Since the OBS Contributors are a small group, we can only test against the hardware and software that we have available. If we do make a mistake with an update, you can bet we'll be on top of it, honest about it, and correct it as soon as we can. Stop by our Community Chat if you need more assistance.

How can I support OBS Project?

There's lots of ways! If you want to donate, we have a page set up for that. If you're looking to contribute to OBS' code, check out our developer quickstart guide. If you're multilingual, and want to help with OBS translations, check out the Crowdin page.