OBS Studio: The Best Free Software for Live Streaming and Video Recording

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Have you heard about OBS Studio? It’s an awesome, free, and open-source tool for all your live streaming and video recording needs! 📹🎥

OBS Studio is all about giving you the freedom to create and share your content, and it’s distributed under the GNU General Public License v2.0. So, you can use it for free without any worries!

But what makes OBS Studio truly amazing are its fantastic features:

  • 🔴 Live stream to all your favorite platforms like Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and more! Any RTMP/RTMPS server can receive a video stream from OBS Studio.
  • ▶️ Record your games, screens, webcams, DirectShow capture devices, and basically anything you can think of!
  • 💻 Hardware encoding using Nvidia NVENC, Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV), and AMD Advanced Media Framework (AMF) for top-notch performance.
  • 🔥 GPU-based game capture for super-smooth streaming.
  • 🎨 Unlimited scenes and sources to make your streams unique.
  • 🌈 Customizable transitions between scenes to keep your viewers engaged.
  • ⌨️ Customizable hotkeys for ultimate control over your stream.
  • 👁️ Live preview of scene and source changes with Studio Mode before applying them to the live stream.

OBS Studio is multiplatform software. You can get official releases for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu Linux. Plus, if you’re into Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, or Gentoo, there are unofficial releases too! You can compile OBS Studio yourself for any operating system you want, thanks to its open source code.

So, whether you’re a seasoned streamer or just getting started, OBS Studio is your trusty sidekick for creating amazing content.

Download OBS Studio

You can find OBS Studio at their official website, obsproject.com, and if you’re a tech enthusiast like us, you’ll love diving into the nitty-gritty of its source code on their official GitHub repository: github.com/obsproject/obs-studio. You can also get involved and suggest code contributions, or supercharge it with custom plugins thanks to its powerful API for customization!

Also, you can download the latest version of OBS Studio from the list below. All binaries there are unchanged official builds.

Download OBS Studio for Windows

OBS Studio 29.1.3 Installer | 64-bit | 127.87 MB

Release date:

OBS Studio 29.1.3 .zip Archive | 64-bit | 140.87 MB

Release date:

System Requirements

  • Windows 11
  • Windows 10 release 1809 or newer

If you need OBS Studio for older or 32-bit Windows, download OBS Studio 27.2.4:

OBS Studio 27.2.4 Installer | 32-bit | 101.92 MB

OBS Studio 27.2.4 .zip Archive | 32-bit | 117.91 MB

OBS Studio Portable Mode

To make OBS Studio portable, which means saving all program data such as settings, profiles, scenes, logs, etc., in the same folder as the program, follow these steps:

  1. Download the .zip version from the list above.
  2. Unzip the downloaded file to your desired folder.
  3. Create a new empty .txt file in that folder and name it obs_portable_mode.txt.

When this file is present in the OBS Studio folder, it runs in portable mode.

Download OBS Studio for macOS

OBS Studio 29.1.3 Installer for macOS | 64-bit | 121.97 MB

Release date:

System Requirements

  • Intel or Apple Silicon CPU
  • OpenGL 3.3-compatible GPU
  • macOS 11 (“Big Sur”) or later

Download OBS Studio for Linux

Prerequisites for OBS Studio Linux Installation

  • OpenGL 3.3 or newer support is required to use OBS Studio on Linux.
    • You can check the version of OpenGL supported by your system by typing glxinfo | grep "OpenGL" in the Terminal.
  • xserver-xorg version 1.18.4 or newer is recommended to avoid potential performance issues with certain features in OBS, such as the fullscreen projector.
  • v4l2loopback-dkms module must be installed for virtual camera support. You can install it with the following command:
    • Debian/Ubuntu-based:
      sudo apt install v4l2loopback-dkms
    • Red Hat/Fedora-based:
      sudo dnf install kmod-v4l2loopback
    • Arch Linux-based/Manjaro:
      You will need to install the kernel headers package for your current kernel beforehand, or the module will not be completely installed.
      sudo pacman -Sy v4l2loopback-dkms

Officially Supported OBS Studio Builds for Linux

The OBS Project maintains two official, supported Linux builds of OBS Studio: Ubuntu and Flatpak.

The Flatpak distribution is recommended for non-Ubuntu distributions.

Ubuntu
  • Enable the multiverse repo in Ubuntu’s software center.
  • Install OBS Studio on Ubuntu 18.04 or later using the following commands:
    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:obsproject/obs-studio
    sudo apt update
    sudo apt install obs-studio
Flatpak
  • Install OBS Studio from Flathub.

Download Source Code

GitHub Repository

The latest source code of OBS Studio (master branch):

Source code of OBS Studio 29.1.3:

2 comments

  1. Why did they stop releasing the 32-bit version of OBS Studio after OBS Studio 27.2.4?

    Reply

    1. It seems like the OBS Studio development team stopped releasing 32-bit versions of OBS Studio after version 27.2.4 because version 28.0 and onwards utilize Qt 6, which no longer supports 32-bit operating systems.

      The shift to Qt 6 likely allowed the OBS developers to take advantage of new features and improvements in Qt, but Qt 6 dropping 32-bit support meant OBS Studio had to as well. By dropping 32-bit support, the OBS team can focus development efforts on 64-bit systems and not have to maintain separate 32-bit codebases.

      Stopping 32-bit releases makes sense as the industry has largely transitioned to 64-bit computing. Maintaining 32-bit compatibility was likely requiring significant development overhead for a small subset of users. The OBS developers chose to embrace newer technologies like Qt 6 at the cost of leaving some older 32-bit systems behind.

      Reply

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